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Organic food - Buying Organic Honey


I am a beekeeper, so I think my advice is accurate (though I allow it may be biased).

Honey is best fresh, untreated, and local.
  • This season's honey will always taste better than last's, and so on. We all know that edible honey was found in the Pyramids, but I doubt it tasted any good.
  • Honey should contain impurities such as microscopic flakes of beeswax, but more importantly, pollen. It should not have been heat treated (which is a way of making it stay clear and runny for longer) because it can ruin the flavour when badly done, and can always destroy trace ingredients which may be valuable.
  • If you can eat local honey you may find that the pollen in it will help to desensitise you to the pollens that give you hay fever.
Whether honey is an organic food seems unimportant to me as a beekeeper: I know my bees are naturally reared, and that any GMO crops are out of their reach. But I also know that I keep them clear of varroa using an approved 'miticide' (which doesn't get into the honey because the hives are treated after the honey crop has been removed).

The good news for proponents of organic food is that the approved 'miticides' are losing their potency, and beekeepers are returning to natural methods of control for this most unnatural pest.

So, for the predictable reason that organic methods are more sustainable for the long term, I suppose I am returning to the organic fold

Charles Marriage

Click this link for suppliers of organic honey (jams, spreads etc.)
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