Welcome to Buffalo City Bees! Raw honey and honey bee information.

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Good question! Honey aside, there simply isn't enough habitat left to support native pollinators at the population levels required to satisfy all of  our  pollination needs. One out of every three bites of the foods we consume are possible only because honey bees and other pollinators fertilize our food plants. In many situations, native bees and other animals are more efficient pollinators but there simply aren't enough of them to get the job done. We support conservation efforts to restore and create new habitat for all pollinators.

Yes and depending on floral source, some honey is more prone to crystallization than others. That's because of the unique sugar species in the nectar each flower species produces and how prone those sugars are to  crystallization. If your honey crystallizes, gently warm it (in the container) in 120 F water until it dissolves—take it out as soon as it liquifies to preserve its great taste and healthy properties. An alternate is to buy our whipped honey. We do heat our whipped honey to nearly 120 F to liquify all the sugar crystals before  seeding it with extremely fine honey crystals from a previous batch of our whipped honey. The consistency is very smooth and it has about the same texture as cake icing. 

Yes, we import about 75% of the honey we consume in America. Our beekeepers simply cannot supply our demand due to reduced bee pasturages and declining profit margins. However, our honey is extremely safe to eat because beekeepers can only use approved chemicals and antibiotics to treat bee diseases and parasites. A licensed Veterinarian is even required to diagnose and prescribe antibiotics for brood diseases. This ensures that the honey produced in the United States is a healthy and nutritious food. Other countries do not follow the same regulations. It's never a bad idea to buy American honey!

Yes, and likely even longer! The earliest known drawings of humans harvesting honey were found in caves in Spain that dated back about 8,000 years ago! Initially, honey bees probably just provided us with a food and sweetener but honey and other hive products soon found a following for treating various human ailments and it even has a place in modern medicine today. Honey is widely regarded as a naturally healthy product full of nutrients, vitamins, antioxidants, broad-spectrum natural antibiotics, and many other healthy ingredients. Honey is especially valued by health-conscious consumers and the demand for raw unfiltered honey in increasing on local, national and international scales. That said, not all honeys are the same. While bees are never treated for diseases or parasites when honey supers (the box and comb that contains honey to be consumed by humans) are in use in the USA, the way honey is handled after it is removed from beehives has considerable influence on its overall nutritional value and taste. Understanding those influences will help you decide which honey best suits your needs. 

Honey comes in many different colors and flavors. The nectar from unique plant flowers is the most obvious factor and many people are especially fond of certain floral types of honey. Clover, sourwood, tupelo, orange, and white sage are just a few examples of honey you may find especially enjoyable. Aside from flavor, honey produced from each unique flower species has a unique composition of sugars—fructose and glucose are common sugar species found in honey but there are many others (e.g., glucose, dextrose), again depending on plant species and even when the nectar was produced during the flowering season. To the consumer, this is important because some honeys will not just taste different but they will crystallize more quickly than others and require gentle heating to liquify. Honey from some plants contain sugars so prone to crystallization, they can crystallize in the honey comb! Each unique floral source has its own signature flavor and each type of honey has a following among honey connoisseurs. A good analogy is in the wine industry—wine can be made from many fruits, including the many different varieties of grapes; they’re all a little different and they all have their following based on individual taste preferences and budget. Some are in especially high demand when a certain growing season (year) produced that “perfect” composition of juice for that “perfect” wine—yes, waiter please bring us a bottle of 2012 Screaming Eagle Cabernet Sauvignon. At $2,000 to $13,000 a bottle, its a wine for wealthy afficinados!!

No, and not all honeys are the same if they came from different floral sources. Understanding how various influences affect honey is key to making informed decisions when you purchase honey. America imports most of the honey we consume so the bulk of the honey consumed isn't produced under the strict regulatory requirements followed in the United States. American beekeepers can treat bee diseases and parasites only using approved chemicals and antibiotics require examination and prescription by a licensed Veterinarian. These regulations help ensure that the honey produced in the United States is as healthy and safe as possible for the consumer. There are certainly some very healthy and high quality honeys produced in other countries but there are exceptions. For example,  "honey laundering" (where honey produced in one country is shipped to a different country where it is rebarreled to obscure country of origin)  to avoid tariffs is one way poor quality honey can enter our market. Honey laundering is an illegal practice that carries stiff penalties and fines, but it's impossible for agents to detect and prosecute every violator. Read honey labels carefully and be aware that corn syrup and other additives can be used to adulterate honey to enhance profit at the expense of honey quality and human health. Buying American honey is never a bad idea!

No, we do not. Blended honey is when honey color and taste lots are blended together to produce a product of consistent color and flavor. Look at the labels next time you’re in the grocery store and look for honey labels that say it’s a product of more than one country—those are certainly blended. However, blended honey can also come from a single country but from different color and taste lots. We’re not saying blended honey is good or bad, it’s just not what we do at Buffalo City Bees. We enjoy the unique flavor of different floral sources and even how they change within a honey producing season. An analogy can be found in the alcoholic spirits industry. Many distillers “blend” spirits for consistency in taste and color but many will bottle an especially outstanding barrel (e.g., single barrel select) for customers who demand the very best. We describe each lot of honey we sell in our product descriptions and guarantee that the honey we describe and picture on our product page is the same exact honey we will ship to you. Buffalo City Bees honey is produced only by honey bees using naturally occurring nectars they collect from flowers—it’s never adulterated nor is it blended for consistency in color and flavor.

Throughout history, man has mostly consumed honey directly from the hive where it is most nutritious and healthy. With the Industrial Age came more efficient ways to get honey from the comb into jars but some of the techniques used can degrade the flavor and reduce the nutritional and health benefits of natural honey—mostly from excessive heating and filtration. At Buffalo City Bees, we do everything we can to preserve the great taste and nutritional quality of our honey. Our goal is to provide you with honey that tastes just like it did the day the bees capped it off for storage in the hive. When honey is filtered, the process removes pollen grains that also provide health and nutritional benefits. We only strain our honey through coarse stainless steel screens to remove wax and other extraction debris while letting pollen grains remain in our honey. Commercially, raw honey is heated to make it more fluid and easier to bottle. However, even heating honey to 98-99 F can reduce some of its natural antibacterial properties, heating to 100 F can denature some enzymes (e.g., invertase) and heating to over 122 F for more than 48 hours can render honey from a healthy and nutritious product into a sweetener flavored like honey but without the nutritional and health benefits! Our honey is extracted after the honey supers (the box and combs filled with honey) have been heated to about the temperature inside a beehive  (usually about 90-95 F). In other cases, we extract, strain and bottle small lots of honey directly from the hive without heating but it does cool to ambient temperature (we do this on a warm summer day) so it is a much slower and more expensive process. We identify the honey we produce this way as an "Estate" quality honey and it is more expensive to produce and we're generally sold out as soon as it's bottled. We mostly sell  honey that was heated to about 90-95 F in a warming room prior to extraction. We make these distinctions in our product descriptions and our price differences reflects the cost of production. Under no circumstances do we heat our honey above 120 F. Our whipped honey is the only product that we heat to nearly 120 F because we need to liquefy all the honey crystals before seeding with very fine crystals from a previous batch of our whipped honey. Our product descriptions provide all the details and our product pictures will match the exact lot of honey you purchase from Buffalo City Bees.