It's vital to know the origins of honey! We take a few minutes below to discuss how and why!  

We are so excited!
Our shop is celebrating our 1st Year in retail in Centurion!!   

What makes for a great honey? 
We take look at the makings of a great honey.

For one thing, we prefer our honey as raw as can be. Excuse the pun... There are many different varieties of honey and not because they have been mixed with something else but because there are as many honey types as there are flowers that the nectar is sourced from.

We have a honey bar at the shop to showcase amazing honey types of local taste and harvesting in the Centurion shop to prove this fact.

Many people do not understand that honey can be as light coloured as a white wine and as dark as molasses and many different shades in between. The fact that this is the case does not meant the honey has been tampered with, added to or even mixed. 

Let's talk Origins of honey!     
People often believe that honey is made from pollen. This may well be due to the emphasis of bees pollinating flowers and therefore moving pollen from flower to flower.

The truth is that honey is made from nectar. It is twice as heavy as sugar in calories roughly speaking but it is much friendlier than glucose as it does not require insulin to break it down inside the body.

The benefits of honey as a sweetener far outweigh the added calories over those consumed in normal cane sugar. Bees collect the nectar and bring it back to the hive before processing it and then packing into a cell. At first the moisture content is too high and the nectar, also referred to as unripe honey, is fanned by the wings of thousands of bees to lower the water content of the nectar until it reaches around 18%.

Once the moisture content is correct the honey is usually capped with a white wax seal which discolours over time to be a light brown translucent colour capping. This is how beekeepers tell if the honey is ready to be harvested.

After the honey is sealed with the cap it is ready to preserve itself indefinitely. As it happens, honey is the only food stuff on the planet that can preserve itself. Granulated honey - self-preserved honey - was discovered in the Pharoah's Tombs in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt sealed over 2000 years ago. The honey was simply warmed up in a jar over hot water for a few minutes and it become liquid again and easily edible. Phenomenal right?

What do retail stores stock?

Nowadays, the origins of honey can be difficult to come to terms with. It may still be from nectar but if you look closely at the labels many of the honey products being sold in our stores today are not locally produced.

Often cheaper and packed with antibiotics, honey is being dumped onto South Africa's shelves and other countries alike by producers that use pesticides, insecticides and antibiotics in the process of beekeeping. 

To better understand the Origins of honey check the labels of honey you may be purchasing at retail outlets. Pay attention to whether the label lists countries of origin: China, Argentina, South Africa altogether for example. An ongoing practice for some honey distributors is to mix imported honey with some local honey. It makes the honey bland and gives it a single flavour! This is not how honey works!

Origins of honey should reflect the source of the nectar they came from by the taste. Many people come to our shop and ask about our honey bar. We offer a variety of different types of honey such as litchi, orange and macadamia and believe it or not many of our customers will ask if we put flavouring in the honey to make it taste like it does.  

What to do? 

We always recommend that lovers of honey should buy local. It won't take long to find a local beekeeper or even a shop where his or her honey is being sold and buy it there!

Avoid the major retailers as most of them stock imported honey which is so mixed they cannot even tell you exactly which country it comes from as they have to name numerous on the label.

Honey should taste like it's origins. If it is litchi it should taste like it. If it is avocado, macadamia, lavender, soya, blue gum, citrus, orange blossom, aloe, cosmos, canola, sunflower, basil, onion or any one of up to and even over 70 different sources of nectar flow from trees, shrubs, crops and weeds it should be different in colour and taste. 

It's not because it was flavoured by man or the beekeeper. It is because of the flowers being different that the honey is different. Aloe honey is light in colour however avocado honey is dark. Aloe honey will granulate much quicker than avocado honey does. Why? Because the nectar comes from two very different plants. Therefore the honey must be different too!  

BEE Honey wise!

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