As the local beekeeper in the group I think I should clear up any misunderstanding about harvesting honey and bee culture. First, any heat will destroy the individual flavor of your honey. Many manufacturers do it to make it faster to strain and to homogenize it. Honey is a natural antibiotic (due to the low water content; 80% sugar, 20% water) and the heat wont kill anything if you've kept your honey in a antiseptic place before jarring. The only reason to strain your honey is to filter all of the wax and bee bits out and your filter size is quite large (40 mesh or larger).
Pollen is kept in cells along side honey. In many cases the bees will cap pollen with honey as a preservative. When I extract the honey I also extract the pollen at the same time. I don't filter the pollen and I don't see bits of it floating in my jars, but I know that its there. If I wanted to just collect pollen I could put pollen traps in the hive.
Some one mentioned that they don't know how flower specific honey is made. It's a cool process really. Bees will leave the hive, fly straight up above the treeline (or roof line, in my case) and head to the flower patch in a straight line. A beekeeper who wants to know where their bees are nectaring will coat their bees with powdered sugar as they leave the hive (in the entryway before they take flight) and watch the direction they fly off towards. Bees will only go as far as they have to for food and typically stay close (they can range as far as 3 miles but usually don't go more than a mile). The beekeeper will then head off in the same direction and when they arrive at the flower patch they will know which bees are theirs because of the powdered sugar. The keeper will know what nectar the bees are collecting and what honey it will make. Since bees have flower fidelity (they only collect from one type of flower at at time) the keeper will check and mark the honeycomb in the hive so that when they extract the honey, they can precisely label their jars.
Here in California, bees are big business. Orchards and other agribusiness hire apiaries, or beekeepers with hundreds or even thousands of hives, to pollinate their fields/orchards. For example, when the bees come back from their several week trip to the almond orchard, nectaring only on the flowers from the trees, you get almond honey. Same is true for orange, blackberry and other honeys.
Hope this helps to answer some questions. IMO, heated honey is not as tasty and pollenless honey is just odd. I agree with Jeswin's dad, the best honey comes straight from the comb, still warm from the hive.
Best,
Marnia
So if the real concern is toxins, whatever that may be, heavy metals
or toxic organics, i dunno.... what we really want is a way to easily
test for them directly, instead of trying to figure out the origin
with a method that could be hacked (i.e. clearing all the pollen away,
then adding in pollen from a different region to mask its origin)
On Sun, Nov 13, 2011 at 10:41 PM, leaking pen <itsatrap@gmail.com> wrote:
> in addition, no, pollen isnt removed by the same process that removes
> bee debris. its watered down, heated to near boiling, forced through
> fine filters, then poured out and left to dry a bit to remove the
> original water. At that point, its no longer honey, imo.
>
> On Sun, Nov 13, 2011 at 6:04 PM, Jeswin <phillyj101@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Sun, Nov 13, 2011 at 3:12 PM, Phil <philgoetz@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> On Nov 11, 4:54 pm, Nathan McCorkle <nmz...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> > http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2011/11/tests-show-most-store-honey-isn...
>>> >
>>> > This might be a very DIYable test to perform, you could even take a
>>> > 'scope with you to farmers markets and do spot checks!
>>>
>>> What do you want to check? For the presence of pollen, or for the
>>> genuineness of the honey? The article doesn't say this stuff is not
>>> honey; it says the pollen has been removed. This could be the result
>>> of filtering out other things people don't like in their honey, like
>>> bee particles.
>>>
>> The problem is not that pollen is removed. The real issue is that removing
>> the pollen removes the only source to determine the origin of the honey
>> itself. Why do we need to know the source? Well, there have been cases were
>> the Chinese produce honey that is unsafe because it is tainted with
>> chemicals and other unnatural impurities[1]. A common factor of pollen-less
>> honey is that it comes from countries with poor regulation and a way to
>> circumvent any trace of origin is to remove the pollen. Suppose Canada
>> produces perfectly safe honey. Then all an illegal honey producer has to do
>> is to remove the pollen and ship through Canada to USA.
>>
>> Pollen-less honey in some cases can mean the stuff isn't all that kosher.
>> Its just one step in the testing process.
>>
>> Reference:
>> [1] "FDA Seizes Tainted Chinese Honey After Sen. Schumer Raises Fuss"
>> http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2010/06/11/127764536/honey-tainted-with-antibiotic-seized-in-philadelphia
>>
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Nathan McCorkle
Rochester Institute of Technology
College of Science, Biotechnology/Bioinformatics
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