Did you know it takes a bee 1000 visits to a flower to make 1 teaspoon of honey?
Bees are so amazing and the honey they produce is equally as amazing to our tastebuds. But what is raw honey? And what are the benefits for health?
Today I’d like to share exactly why we might want to choose raw honey over the regular honey options and explore some of the health benefits too.
Natural Honey From The Hive
Eating pure raw honey goes back centuries, yes even the cavemen would have had it from time to time. Imagine finding a beehive out in nature, what a precious delight that would have been. However, I don’t know if I’d be keen to risk the onslaught of those bees, would you?
Still you can imagine the pure, raw unadulterated honey and all the amazing benefits it would have in its pure form. Though our methods of approaching the bees is now somewhat advanced, raw honey comes straight from the hive so let’s find out more about it.
What Is Raw Honey? Benefits for health
The raw honey is extracted directly from the beehive and kept in its pure form. It is unheated, unpasteurized, and essentially fully unprocessed. It even contains all the bits associated with the bees, that is: bits of bee pollen, propolis, honeycomb, and sometimes a few bits of bee too! Bee pollen itself is an amazing superfood that has 96 known available nutrients.
Raw honey has many health benefits including:
- beneficial enzymes that stay active
- antioxidants
- vitamins and minerals
- anti viral properties
- anti bacterial properties
- anti-inflammatory properties
- and the list goes on
Raw honey in its pure form actually contributes to the health of your body in many ways. In fact there are specific raw brands such as Manuka honey that are designed to strengthen the immune system and many people eat this type of honey when they get common colds and flus.
Bee pollen
When you eat raw honey you get the honey but you also get some of the bee pollen which is amn amazing superfood!
Bee pollen has 96 known nutrients that supply our body with B complex vitamins, folic acid, amino acids, minerals and enzymes. It’s great for vegetarians and vegans because it contains 40% protein and is a complete food source.
Here’s some of the raw honey benefits for health when it comes to bee pollen.
- helping to boost your immunity as it has natural antibiotic properties
- helping to regulate digestion with it’s active enzymes
- helps developmental problems in children
- excellent free radical scavenger with it’s high antioxidant quality
- cancer prevention
- helps reduce cravings and addictions such as sugar, alcohol, carbohydrates
- helps assist weight loss by helping to reduce cravings and correct imbalances in metabolism
- helps build new blood
- increases longevity
- helps to reduce blood pressure and strengthen the heart
- helps to increase energy, improve stamina, endurance and vitality
- helps to normalise cholesterol levels
- helps reduce inflammation so it may help with arthrits, aches and pains and all other inflammatory problems
- helps balance hormones so may be helpful in reducing menopausal symptoms and PMS along with fertility and ovarian issues. And may also help men with prostate too.
Bee Propolis
Add to the raw honey mix the wonderful benefits of propolis! Propolis is a resinous substance collected by bees from tree buds and is used to fill crevices and to seal and varnish honeycombs.
Propolis has traditionally been used to kill colds and flu. Health beenfits include:
- Anti-bacterial, anti-fungal, and anti-viral
- Anti-inflammatory
- Anti-tumor/Anti-cancer
- Hepatoprotective (capability to prevent damage to the liver)
- Antioxidant activity
WOW! There are clearly loads of benefits to getting a few bits of bee pollen and propolis in your honey 
So what about regular honey? Let’s compare the two
Raw honey has a habit of crystalizing quickly so processing procedures have evolved to make honey more appealing to consumers.
Regular honey that we find in the grocery store is pastuerised and heated above 70°, then cooled rapidly. It then gets filtered in order to get that wonderful clear and smooth light brown color we have become accustomed to. Raw honey tends to crystalize much faster than regular honey, which is not very productive for the food industry because its shelf life isn’t as long.
The problem there is that when the honey is heated to high temperatures, it loses all the beneficial enzymes, nutrients, vitamins and minerals. And when they filter it, none of those beneficial bits are left in the mix at all. So instead of consuming a beneficial food, we are just consuming another pure form of empty sugar.
Raw honey is clearly the best option of the two.
Have you tried raw honey?
I think it has a much richer and fuller flavour. What do you think?
Jedha
P.S. This post is part of the natural sugar substitute series I’m running right now.
Here’s what we are going to cover:
- What is raw honey? Benefits & Uses – this post
- Rapadura sugar
- Stevia sweetener pros and cons
- Agave nectar vs honey
- What is molasses & black molasses
- What is erythritol?
- Coconut sugar
- Fructose vs sucrose
- Best natural sweeteners – a comparison and wrap up
Be sure to subscribe to my weekly newsletter to be informed of the topics to come
I feel so blessed with having a bee keeper in the family. I get all kinds of raw honey from local flora + bee pollen and tons of 100% pure bees wax.
While I fully support the consumption of REAL honey, and supporting local bee keepers (I am one) this article has some misinformation.
Raw honey may or may not crystallize faster than “store” honey. It is more dependent on the nectar collected than anything else. Some varieties of nectar contribute to faster crystallization, others may take years to crystallize. They are still raw honeys.
Crystallized honey does not make it real honey. Bees fed solutions of corn syrup and sugar will produce honey that crystallizes rapidly, and it is a common practice with commercial bee keepers to do this..they over harvest the bees honey, and feed them syrup instead. Crystallization is poor method for judging honey.
Heating honey above 70 degrees does not damage the honey or any of its benefits. . Honey IN the hive is kept around 90 degrees, and many bee keepers will warm it to around 90 degrees in order to extract it.
The majority of honey has to be filtered somewhat, and most bee keepers will run it through a strainer for liquid honey. The strainer may be a jelly bag, or a metal mesh filter to remove larger chunks of comb (and bees) lack of bee heads and feet does not mean the honey is not “raw”. The “rawest” honey is comb honey, which some keepers sell but expect a higher price tag for production costs. It will include the comb with honey in it, either cut from the hive, or the bees are encouraged to produce it in containers within the hive.
Raw honey comes in an amazing variety of colors and shades. The honey we harvest in the Spring is very pale and yellow, the honey in the fall is a much deeper amber. Some bee keepers will sell the different flower and seasonal honeys, but many put the honey in large storage tanks and blend it for a more consistent product. It is still raw honey.
The commercial pasteurized honey is watered down, heated to much higher temps (at least 160 degrees), and put through a highpressure filter that removes all pollen and other benefits. The honey is crystal clear, and may or may not be blended with non-honey.
Find a local keeper or company and ask about their practices, most will be happy to tell you. If they are not, or avoid the question, buy another brand. Even the best bee keepers occasionally have to feed sugar syrups to bees, in long Winters and droughts especially. Some feed honey back, some feed sugar syrup. Ask when and how the honey is harvested, and what treatments are used in the hive (most keepers have practices to keep mites and other pests to a minimum).
Bee informed
I do agree with that. I got several different honeys and not all crystallize that fast, some are still fluid and all is raw. I know my stepbrother is using some kind of a centrifuge to get the honey out without any form of heating.
Thanks for leaving such a detailed comment.
I have looked into bee keeping myself, I think it’s fascinating and may get a hive myself one day.
As for the extraction, true raw honey is extracted using a centrifuge as Wilhelmina suggests, it’s like a wheel where they insert the hives and it runs in a circular motion at very high speeds and this extracts the honey in it’s natural state. From the research I’ve done, the heating process does destroy beneficial properties, though I may have been incorrect at the variaying degrees of heating involved. In any case, I think the overall point was to buy raw honey because it is definitely a better option health wise
Yes, most is extracted through a centrifuge looking contraption. Again, honey is maintained at around 90 degrees in the hive, bees are a tropical insect. If you try to extract honey at less than 70 degrees, it doesn’t centrifuge out..promise
We do fine centrifuging it here in the late Autumn and Summer, between 80-upper 90s ambient temperature. It still has all the beloved goodness in it!
I try to correct these things when I see them, I think the more educated a consumer is, the wiser the choices they will make.
I tell people frequently not to buy organic honey. You can organically manage the bees, but it doesn’t make the honey free of pesticides. Bees will forage withing a 5 mile radius for nectar, and to be truly organic, it would have to be verified that not a single home owner, city, or county used pesticides in operation. Not likely in most of the world (Brazil however produces it!)
Raw honey is a definite boon to health, I think we all agree there! It has stopped my Spring allergies, and I sleep better at night with a few spoons before bed. I am also diabetic and use it to help manage blood sugars. It truly is fascinating stuff!!
Oh, and do keep bees if you get a chance..you won’t regret it, or the sweet rewards that come from well managed hives
Thanks so much for your input, I really appreciate it
Good point about the organic honey, I never thought about that but bees do wander. I will definitely be looking into keeping bees I think it would be a great experience.
Raw is good for your health
Well said Willie!
Hello. I was wondering if it is normal for your tongue and inside your mouth to become itchy after eating raw honey?
Apologies for the late reply Dawn. It’s not normal but it is an allergic reaction called oral allergy syndrome.
This is a common but mild form of food allergy that occurs from fruits, vegetables or as a reaction to pollens.
Symptoms are usually limited to the mouth and include itching, tingling, red bumps like hives but under the skin, swelling of the lip, oral mucosa, palate, and throat.
These symptoms will occur during or soon after contact with the allergen. If you find a food that does this, most commonly you just have to avoid certain things if symptoms persist.
There’s more detailed info about different types of food allergies here http://goodfoodeating.org/6421/food-allergies/
Hi,
I got honey extracted direct from the hive which was in Asopalav tree(Polyalthia longifolia) in my Apartment.
I filtered it with strainer and muslin cloth twice.
Is it then ready to consume ?
I think its the purest form of Raw honey
I’m not a honey expert Sonia but I’d say it’s perfectly fine to eat, people eat honeycomb straight front the hive.
I bet it tastes amazing.
We love the taste of the raw honey, but the last jar we purchased of 3 lbs was really sugrery. We tried heating it in warm water but nothing happened.can you tell me what to do so it reforms back to the creamy thick form?
Thank you!
It won’t reform so I think the only way you could use it is to heat it more, put it in hot drinks, cooking and so forth.