No jarred honey, in our opinion, is ‘raw’. The only way to enjoy ‘raw’ honey is to eat it directly from the combs. To our mind, ‘raw’ honey is exactly what it sounds like – honey that is raw, unprocessed, unpasteurized, and straight from the beehive. It’s what bees produce and store directly in the hive. To jar honey one still needs some sort of straining (unless it’s comb honey that’s still in the comb) because otherwise there would be flakes and bits of wax that comes off the combs during the spinning or crush-straining extraction process. If you want truly raw, and as the bees intended, then you need to buy honey in its comb with the wax cappings still on, ideally in the frame that was removed from the hive.

Be very dubious of buying a jar of extracted honey that is being sold as ‘raw’.

Our honey isn’t flash heated or pasteurised and is only coarsely strained to remove wax but leave the pollen particles. Our comb honey sells out as soon as it’s put on the website. Only summer honey (in our area) can be used for comb honey so it’s only available mid to late summer.

“Definitions for raw honey that we have heard include ‘not pasteurised’, ‘not heated above hive temperature’, ‘comb honey’ and ‘just a faddy term used to sell more to hipster folk’. Not pasteurised is sometimes defined as ‘partial sterilisation’ sometimes defined as not heating above hive temperature, generally 32–35 °C. The degree of filtering also sometimes enters the brawl with an unclear distinction between coarse and fine filtering.”

Bee Craft Magazine, October 2018