What Do “Unpasteurized”, “Raw” or “Pure Honey” really Mean?

What Do “Unpasteurized”, “Raw” or “Pure Honey” really Mean?

We frequently get questions from people who visit our farm store or see us at farmers’ markets who want to know about our honey.
They’ll ask questions like:
“Is this unpasteurized?”
“Is this raw or pure honey?”
“Do you heat your honey?”
“Is this honey organic?”
These are all legitimate questions to ask. People want to know that the honey they are eating is of the best quality. They want to be assured it hasn’t been mistreated or adulterated. And they want to support local beekeepers.
But some of the answers can be bound up in consumer misconceptions and misinformation. So I am going to try to demystify most of them with some clear language. I will leave the issue of “is this organic honey” to a later post simply because it is deserving of a lot of discussion.

So, What is “Pure Honey”?

This is the very definition of honey that has not been adulterated with added sugars or syrups, or is a fake alternative that trades on the name. It is a product that has only been collected by bees, stored in a bee hive, and is harvested by a beekeeper.
Honey is created by bees from the nectar they collect from a wide variety of plants and trees. They use a number of enzymes in their honey stomach to convert the sugars into a stable product.

Honey also includes microscopic bits of pollen that bees collect from those flowers. That is in addition to the pollen granules that bees collect and carry on their bodies. That “bee pollen“ is a huge source of proteins and is the basic building block for larvae and musculoskeletal development. Honey is a source of carbohydrates and is used as energy for the bee.

Enzymes in honey

Principal among the enzymes bees use to create honey are Invertase, Glucose Oxidase and Diastase. Invertase is involved in the conversion of sucrose to fructose and glucose, which helps in the conversion into honey. Glucose Oxidase is what creates gluconic acid, which reduces honey’s pH value low enough to contribute to antibacterial properties. It also helps produce hydrogen peroxide, which has significant health and healing benefits.
Diastase converts the starches in the nectar to sugar, principally fructose and glucose. It is much more sensitive to heat. There are other enzymes in honey as well, but you get the drift.
Sharla Riddle produced a very good article for Bee Culture on The Chemistry of Honey. YouTuber Bob Binnie also has a great video from five years ago that explains honey chemistry and what happens when we process it. See The Effects that Processing has on Raw Honey.

Pure honey is full of antioxidants and has antibacterial, antifungal and antimicrobial properties. It can safely exist for years before being eaten. There is very little that can destroy honey, other than fermentation or heat. Fermentation takes place when the honey has a high moisture content, which then activates the wild yeasts present. It is how mead, or honey wine, is made.

What Pure Honey Cannot Be: Adulterated

There is a growing concern around the world about honey fraud, which is the passing off of deliberately altered sugars, or natural syrups such as rice and corn, as “pure honey”. This is not the same as when packers blend honey from different sources or countries. Blending honey is practiced by some packers to produce a cheaper or more color-consistent honey. It is still considered “pure honey” even though it is a blend of several sources of honey.

(We do not blend honeys and instead rejoice in the variety of forages and flavours we find.)
However, honey adulteration is a serious problem, especially for Canada and the United States. See this useful Western Producer article. Such fraud is done by people who want to illegally trade on the high value that honey generates. They may take a base of honey and extend it with corn or rice syrup or other equally cheap syrups. Or, worse, they may entirely make a product that tastes like honey but has not one drop of it. There is an effort in Canada to reduce honey fraud through scientific research.

“Vegan Honey” is not Real Honey and shouldn’t even use the word

And then there are the folks who trade on the valued name of “honey” to create a “vegan hunnie” product made from things like apple juice and dandelions. They want the association with honey, and make specious claims about it being “cruelty-free” to bees.

I guess calling their product “apple jelly” doesn’t satisfy them. Kind of like calling a plant-based product “a hamburger alternative” or “meat-free burger” instead of what it is.

The stark and unavoidable irony here is that these fake honey products are still made with the efforts of honey bees, who pollinate the plants and trees that generate the fruit used in their “bee-free” products. So much for being “bee-free”.
I’ll discuss in another blog post about how Honey Bee Zen is part of efforts to combat honey fraud, and to assure our customers ours is 100 per cent pure honey.

Comb Honey Is The Purest Form of “Raw Honey”

If the honey frame has a wax foundation or mid-rib, the honey can be cut out in pieces without uncapping, making up the term “comb honey”. This form is in fact the purest form of raw honey, just as it was produced by the bees. (In season we sell comb honey, which is an old method of production. There are only a few beekeepers in BC who, like ourselves, actively produce comb honey for the retail market.)

In every process other than comb the honey is subjected to some manipulation by the beekeeper. It is “extracted” by uncapping the tops of the cells and then spinning the frame in a machine, or extractor. The centrifugal force expels the honey, which is then collected in tanks or buckets for later distribution in jars or tubs.
There is a long-standing debate about what qualifies as “raw” honey. Some say raw means only honey in its purest form, in comb. Others say that honey that is not filtered or is “cold-pressed” without heat can be classified as “raw”. And others, like ourselves, believe that honey can qualify as raw if it has been extracted and lightly filtered at nest temperature to take out foreign particles and things like “bees’ knees”.
What doesn’t qualify as “raw” is honey that has been highly filtered to take out even pollen granules, or pasteurized, or subjected to prolonged heat.

What Does Unpasteurized Mean?

Pasteurization in dairy products and fruit juices is about killing bacteria and other pathogens that can affect food safety. You want pasteurized milk. In B.C., for example, health regulations require milk for public consumption to be pasteurized.
Honey naturally has a low pH level, on average 3.2. That’s because of the presence of at least 18 amino acids, principally among them gluconic acid. As a result of the naturally acidic environment in honey, bacteria cannot survive.

So why pasteurize? It is done to halt the natural process of crystallization. Almost all honeys will naturally crystallize, or become thick and hard with naturally-occurring sugar crystals. Pasteurization of honey doesn’t make it more safe, and it is not required by health authorities. But the process does fundamentally alter honey in terms of taste and flavour.
Large packing companies will heat honey to a high temperature, usually about 145°F or 63°C, before quickly cooling. Doing so kills honey crystals, as well as osmophilic yeasts that can cause fermentation if the moisture of the honey is too high. They do this to create a shelf-stable, clear liquid that is easy to pour and won’t go cloudy or turn hard.
But the heat process also kills the natural enzymes, pollens, yeasts and other things that make honey so healthy for you.
Studies have repeatedly shown that unpasteurized honey is better for you than honey that has been heated to a high temperature. Here’s one from Healthline, but a little research will give you more supporting studies.
I’m sure honey pasteurizers won’t like this, but I tell our customers that all that pasteurization does is turn your lovely honey into an expensive bucket of sugar.

Do You Heat Your Honey?

This is one of those double-edged questions that deserves a good explanation. The temperature of a bee hive is about 97°F, or 36°C. At that temperature the hive’s nursery is productive and stored honey stays liquid.
When extracting, beekeepers need a little heat to make movement of the honey easier. Cold honey doesn’t move well.
Most beekeepers, including us here at Honey Bee Zen, extract honey at nest temperature or a little higher as part of the process of taking honey from hive to bottle. We do that by temporarily holding harvested honey boxes in a “hot room” before extraction. This keeps the frames of honey warm in preparation for extractoin. Our hot room has a maximum temperature of 90°F or 32.2°C. That’s enough to help us move honey, but not damage it.

At any higher than about 110°F or 43.3°C, or given prolonged exposure to heat, honey begins to lose some of its health value. Its flavours change and the honey can darken. Those bee-derived enzymes can get damaged.

When we process our honey, we use only the minimum heat necessary and subject it to the shortest time possible. We use extractors that spin the honey out quickly, and we use a water-jacketed float filter tank to remove wax and particles.

More on Honey Chemistry

I recently listened to a terrific talk by Bob Binnie, the YouTuber, about the chemistry of honey. The talk, given at the North American Honey Bee Expo in Louisville, KY, delved deeply into this very subject. His advice was the same as we practice: extract at the lowest possible temperature, expose the honey to as little prolonged heat as possible, and don’t – just don’t – pasteurize.
His talk has not yet been posted on his channel, but five years ago he gave a similar one, The Effects that Processing has on Raw Honey, that is well worth watching.
I hope this helps answer some of those questions about what makes honey so special. We are very proud of what we do at Honey Bee Zen, and want to offer only the best products to our customers.

We’ll post articles in the future that answer questions like “why does my honey crystallize” and “can honey really be ‘organic’ if bees can fly farther than a certified organic farm?” and “how to read a honey label to make sure you know what you’re buying.”
Reach out to us through the commenting section if you have questions.