Raw Honey Explained

Mmmmmmm! Honey is so yummy. But what is raw honey? You may have heard this term, or you may wonder why some honey you buy is not "raw". I will explain.

This honey bee is using her proboscis to collect nectar from this ceanothus  flower.
Also, see her full pollen basket on her leg?

This bumblebee also wants some of the action.

Simply put, honey is flower nectar that the bees have collected and then stored in the hive. They fan their wings to evaporate the water and it becomes the thick honey that we know and love. The color and taste of the honey depends on the kind of flower the bees collect the nectar from. When the honey's moisture content is below 18% it is ready, and the bees cap the storage cell with wax. When we harvest honey from our bees, we take it out of the hive and extract it from the honey comb. We strain out the loose beeswax and we are left with the raw honey. We make sure the bees have enough for their needs over the winter, and we keep the extra.

Capped and uncapped honey

Honey in the comb from different flowers,
after we cut the cappings off. Such a contrast!
See the strip we missed on the right there?

Raw honey means that the pollen has not been filtered out of the honey, and it has not been heated (over 140 degrees Fahrenheit, though we have seen numbers as low as 120 degrees and as high as 165 degrees). Filtering honey gets all of the particles and small air bubbles out and makes it crystal clear. It also slows down the natural crystallization process. Don't think of raw honey in the same category as raw milk or raw meat. Raw honey has been minimally processed; less filtering and no high heating and that's all. Some people believe that it provides health benefits-that's a subject for a different time.

To learn more about honey visit the National Honey Board at http://www.honey.com/
To learn more about keeping bees look to the Washington State Beekeeper's Association: http://wasba.org/

Cutting off the cappings.

Fresh honey!

Mid-Season Honey Harvest

We removed one honey super from the front yard hive which, to say the least, has been thriving. It was full  of capped honey after the blackberries were done blooming. We got about 2 gallons of honey from nine frames!

Golden and delicious!

In the extractor

Raw honey!

Solar Wax Melter

The bees often make what we call burr comb also called wild comb. It's just comb that they create outside of the frame. To make the hive more organized, we sometimes scrape the small bits of extra comb and set it aside. We also collect more wax when we cut the cappings off of the honey in the frames before we harvest it. What to do with all this beeswax? Melt it and filter it of course! So we built a solar wax melter. This uses the heat of the sun to melt the wax and we can filter out the yucky stuff, or "slum gum" and we are left with buttery yellow pure beeswax! We used an old window for the lid, and placed foam insulation on the bottom and sides. So far our melter has heated to 190 degrees Fahrenheit but is usually around 175 on a sunny, Pacific Northwest summer day. The wax melting point is around 140 degrees Fahrenheit, so the wax melter works well for our needs.

Put the wax comb on top of the metal screen,

Let it melt through the screen,

and drip into the baking pan and cool.

Voila! Filtered beeswax!