RAW AND PURE HONEY

Fantastic selection of the greatest quality honeys, propolis and pollen, mainly from Spanish beekeepers.

Summary: Raw honey is a fantastic food that we have been taking for millennia. Furhtermore, a food rich in vitamins and other nutrients that provides great health benefits.. Also, in our store in Las Rozas de Madrid you have at your disposal a fantastic selection of raw honeys from Spain. Honeys like; eucalyptus, lavender, rosemary, thyme, etc.

Related articles: Where to buy raw bee honey Unpasteurized raw honey. The best designations of origin for honey. The most expensive honeys in the world.

1. Our selection of raw honeys

Firstly, we show  you the most important information about raw and pure honey:

a) Highest quality: 100% raw honey

All the honey that we sell in our shop is raw honey, that is to say, honey that has not suffered any alteration in temperature. Therefore, real honey.

b) Colour

Honey can vary from very light almost white colours to dark colours and even to black. Furthermore, most of them take amber colours with reddish reflections.Also, the colour of honey comes from the minerals which are found in myelates. Honeys with more minerals are darker honeys than honeys coming from nectar.

In addition, we show you a table with the different colours that we can find in a honey.

Photo 1: Colour grading of honey

c) Certify the quality

Furthermore, we have visited all our beekeepers, their packing rooms and their apiaries, in order to ensure the purity and the commitment they have in selling quality honey. Likewise, we have asked for their certificates and mainly, in the case of organic honey.

d) Ecological and conventional

We have also at your disposal both organic and conventional honey.

e) Population indicated

The harvest is suitable for all people over 2 years of age. However, people suffering from diabetes should also be careful and ask his doctor.

f) Gift of nature

Moreover, honey is one of the few foods that nature gives us, where no living being suffers.

g) State controls

Similarly, all the honey we sell has passed the state controls required by Spanish law.

h) Beekeeping and sustainable production

When we visit the apiaries and meet the beekeepers, we really appreciate also how they treat their bees and the care they take of nature.

Photo 2: Bee poem

i) Rural development and population fixing

In addition, we also appreciate the effort and usefulness of beekeepers in rural development and rural population fixing.

In short, we offer you top quality honeys together with maximum respect for nature.

2. Raw and pure beehoney 

Pure and raw honey is a natural product that comes from plants through the intermediary of bees. Plants supply food to bees by two ways, or by:

• The nectar produced by the flowers of the plants
• By substances exuded by insects and stingers, called myelates.

a) Production of honey by bees

First of all, the bees collect nectar and myelates from the plants, store them in their crop, at the same time that they smear pollen and carry out pollination. As a result, they transmit pollen from flower to flower.

Also, in the bee’s crop, the raw material is mixed with its saliva, which fluidizes it and enriches it with enzymes, and with biochemical catalysts that participate in the transformation of honey sugars. Then, once the bee has filled its crop, it moves to the hive, in order to empty its contents to its companions.

Video 1: Honey production

Then, once the pecorator bees take it to the hive, they pass it on to their sister bees. In the same way, this nectar or honeydew is passed from one to the other. Therefore, they pass it from stomach to stomach in order to enrich it, lower its content in water and transform it.

b) The time of harvesting by the beekeeper

Finally, they deposit this food which could already be honey in the cells of the hive. Here, its water content decreases even more. After, when it reaches a sugar concentration between 70 and 80%, the cells with the honey are closed with an opercle for later consumption.  That is to say, they operculan the cells.

Therefore, at this moment we would already have the honey ready to be collected. Approximately when 80% of the cells are operculated, the honey is at its optimum point.

c) Practices against quality

Some beekeepers, in order to obtain higher yields, collect honey from hives with low operculation rate. In other words, the honey is not made yet and has a higher water content. Consecuently, these practices lower the quality of the honey, because this honey can ferment. In addition, they sell you water for honey.

Like all fraudulent practices, these types of beekeepers sell water for honey. For this reason, we visit and deal directly with the beekeepers, to always offer you the best honey on the market. Hence, we know that there are cheaper honeys, but our first objective is quality.

“Obtained in a natural and environmentally friendly way”.

Photo 3: Unoperated honeycomb 

d) Bee and Flower Mutualities

Flowers provide bees with food, but they also get something in return, so they have to form a mutualism. When the bees collect nectar from the flowers, the bees soak up pollen. When the bee visits another flower, it spreads the pollen on other flowers and fertilizes them. In this way, the plant gives food to the bee, but it has to spend less energy to produce large amounts of pollen as anemophilous plants do, which transport their pollen with the wind.

e) How to differentiate them?

How to differentiate a quality honey with a low quality or adulterated honey. The answer is easy when adulteration is very clear, but it is not easy, when the adulteration is more sophisticated. In general, when we buy a raw honey, we have to take into account the following points

1. If it is crystallized, it is a point that indicates that the honey is of higher quality
2. It has a great flavor
3. It can’t be very liquid.
4. Avoid very low prices
5. Trying to buy honey from Spanish beekeepers

In another words, these would be 5 basic points to ensure that the honey we buy is a quality raw honey. However, you can find more information in our article “Raw unpasteurized honey”.

3. Ecological or organic honey

With the increasing degradation of our planet and the increase in degenerative diseases, awareness of healthier living and care for the environment has entered fully into the world population.  Forms of life that are in harmony with our environment and take care of our health, with this objective the tendency of ecological feeding has arisen.

For instance, honey bees, the bee species that produces pure honey in larger quantities and allows easy commercialization, play a fundamental role in the pollination of crops and natural spaces all over the world. Therefore, their expansion throughout the world, and sometimes unprofessional care of them, has led to the spread of local diseases from distant countries.

Today, the honeybee cannot survive on its own, because many diseases attack it and if it is not for the care of man, it would quickly disappear from the earth.

In addition, they must be treated and cared for every year. For, without proper treatment, their survival is impossible, even in the most unspoiled landscape on earth. This is where the difference lies between pure organic and conventional honey.

a) Differences

Pure organic honey uses only organic products, such as thymol. Conventional honey, on the other hand, can use chemical or pharmaceutical products.

Furthermore, both organic and conventional beekeepers of pure honey are controlled by government institutions, and in both there can be no remaining chemical products.

For this reason and from El Cortijuelo de San Benito we recommend to our clients that they focus more at the time of buying, in that the honey is raw or pure, that if it is ecological or not.

b) Summary of the different honeys

Furthermore, here is a summary of the different honeys we can find in the market.

Table 1: Differences between the different types of honey.

“The best selection of organic and non-organic honeys”.

4. Composition of raw and pure honey:

Honey is mainly composed of glucose and fructose, and other components. However, this composition varies, depending on several factors. Factors that we will see below:

1. Floral source or source of myelate
2. Soil conditions
3. Race of bees
4. Bee health status
5. Time of year, etc.

In general, the honeys coming from myelates (heather, forest, holm oak, oak…) are darker honeys than the light honeys, which come from the nectar of the flowers (orange blossom honey, rosemary, thyme, eucalyptus…). Likewise, dark honeys have a high concentration of minerals. On the other hand, light honeys are richer in nectar and antioxidants.

Specifying a little more, in honey we find the following nutrients:

Firstly, the composition of honey can be divided into two groups, the main elements that make up more than 95 to 99% of the honey’s dry matter, and the minor components, the rest.

a) Major components:

On average, the major components are as follows:

Table 2: Major components of honey.

Quality honeys are usually 17% water, although the legal limit is 21%. Likewise, in the case of the calluna (heather) honey, its humidity usually reaches 23%.

On the other hand, the set of sugars constitutes between 95 and 99% of all dry matter.

b) Minor components

Minor components: organic acids, amino acids and proteins, enzymes (glucose invertase, glucose oxidase, amylases α and β from bee saliva, large amount of water-soluble vitamins, carotenoid pigments (red), flavonoids (yellow) and minerals.

5. Properties of honey:

First of all, honey is a completely natural product with enormous medicinal and dietary properties. Therefore, a food that everyone should take daily.

Among the most important properties, we can name the following:

• Pure honey help to cures or reduces intestinal problems, stomach ulcers, help to fall asleep, constipation, sore throat.
• It is an important source of energy and gives muscle vigor.
• In its external use, it is ideal for healing burns, wounds. Its high content in sugars and the enzyme glucose-oxidase, causes the release of hydrogen peroxide along with low water content, provides bactericidal and antiseptic conditions.

In addition to many other properties that are known by traditional wisdom, but that science has not yet demonstrated.

6. Where to buy raw or pure honey?

In other hands, finding pure honey on the market isn’t that easy. Especially if you’re looking for it in supermarkets where most of honey sold is not real honey.

Therefore, in our shop located in Las Rozas de Madrid, you can find also a fantastic selection of pure and raw honey from Spain and Europe. They all come from serious and honest beekeepers. As a result, we sell real honey.

Table 3: Different options to buy quality honey.

* We have to inform who to buy from, because on the internet it sells low as high quality.

7. Our brands and beekeepers

We have selected beekeepers who are committed to quality, beekeeping and the environment. We only work with quality, so everything in our store is real raw honey.

Among the brands we work with we have the following:

Antonio Simón	Apícola Moreno	Como una Reina	Obreras de Aliste
Phone number: 91 620 90 47 E-Mail: correo@miel-antoniosimon.com Webpage: miel-antoniosimon.com/	Phone number: 949 28 10 21	Phone number:  962 260 384 Webpage: www.comounareina.com	Phone number: 619 94 55 94 Webpage: www.lasobrerasdealiste.es E-mail: info@lasobrerasdealiste.es
Madrid	Guadalaja, no Do La Alcarria	Valencia	Zamora

Table 4: Beekeepers we work with.

More companies we work with.

Rancho Cortesano	Rika	Valderromero	Sala-Higón
Phone number: 956 23 75 28 E-Mail: miel@eanchocortesano.net Webpage: www.ranchocortesano.net	Phone number: 622 437 753 Web page: www.rikamiel.com E-mail: rika@rikamiel.com	Phone number:  962 260 384 Webpage: www.comounareina.com	Phone number: 962 52 74 27 Webpage: latiendadelamiel.com E-mail: info@lasobrerasdealiste.es
Cádiz	Tenerife	La Alcarria, Guadalajara	Valencia

Table 5: Beekeepers we work with.

a) More brands

In Spain there are also thousands of beekeepers spread all over the country. We have selected these, and in the future we will add some more. This does not detract from the fact that you can also find other quality honeys.

Photo 4: Our shop in Las Rozas de Madrid

7. Frequent questions

In addition, these are frequently asked questions:

• Is honey good for your health?

Honey is a natural product that contains minerals and vitamins, which are very beneficial to health.

• How can I make it crystallize before?

If we want to accelerate the crystallization, we must put the jar at a temperature close to 14 degrees. At other temperatures it is delayed, and in case of high temperatures it is decrystallized.

• Are these all Spanish honeys?

Almost all the honeys we sell are Spanish, but there are some from other countries. For instance, we bring honey from Germany, New Zeland, Hungary….

• Are all the honeys you sell here really Spanish?

We have visited almost all our beekeepers, their facilities and apiaries in order to ensure the highest quality of the honey we sell. For this reason, we can tell you that we sell real top quality honey.

• What consistency does it usually arrive with?

It depends on the variety and the time of the year. The dark honeys always arrive liquid, the rest of the honeys are sometimes solidified, with the exception of summer, when the heat makes them almost all liquid.

• Can we heat honey?

If honey is heated in an infusion or coffee, it loses some properties, but few. However, the ral problem lies in heating honey for long periods of time, as happens with uncured honeys that are pasteurised.

Sources:

The english media BBC

 “Finally, for more information, please do not doubt to contact us. Further, we are pleased to help you”.