Frequently asked questions
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Honey starts out as liquid, but depending on the ratio of glucose to fructose in the nectar, honey naturally crystallizes more or less quickly. That does not mean that there is anything wrong with it at all. It is just the way honey is in this part of the world. It’s all down to the plants that grow here in Finland.
Some honey, such as rape seed flowers for instance, crystallizes so rapidly that it can easily crystallize inside the honey comb, if the beekeeper is not quick enough to extract it. That is one reason why we try to avoid rapeseed (as well as the taste).
Our liquid honey is from plants that do not crystallize quickly. It depends on the weather how much of that kind of honey we harvest in any given year.
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We carefully manage the crystallization process of our honey. We do this by adding a small amount of crystallized honey to the honey when it is still liquid and mix it slowly at regular intervals. The initial honey we add functions as a so-called “seed” for crystallization.
In order for this to work properly we need to be sure that the honey is well strained and we need to manage the temperature of the process. Crystallization happens best at low temperatures.
This process can take many days to complete. The stirring schedule determines wether the honey is smooth or solid in the end.
Luonnon Kulta Smooth Finnish Honey stays smooth. It does not solidify in the jar. This is also known as creamed honey in some parts of the world.
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Store in a dry dark place at room temperature.
Sunlight deteriorates the beneficial enzymes in honey.
Honey stores best at room temperature (i.e. 20°C / 68°F), or slightly cooler than that.
At higher temperatures crystallized honey can start to separate because the temperature causes the glucose to separate from the crystal structure and it rises to the top. While that does not mean the honey went bad, it is a cosmetic defect.
Liquid honey stays liquid best at room temperature. Because crystallization happens best at lower temperatures, store liquid honey at ≥20°C. That way it will stay liquid for longer.
Always close the lid of the jar when not using it. Honey readily absorbs both moisture and smells. Therefore it should not be left sitting in the open.
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If your liquid honey starts to crystallize, you can warm it up gently by placing the closed jar in a warm water bath to melt it. While the enzymes will not particularly enjoy the warmth, this does not ruin your honey if the water is not boiling hot or left in the heat for an unnecessarily long time.
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Eventually, yes. But not instantly. The degradation of the beneficial enzymes in honey is a function of both temperature and time. Tea water is very hot, but even so, it takes some time for the honey to degrade.
For best results, wait a minute or two after pouring the hot water onto the tea before adding the honey into the tea. By then the temperature will already have dropped, so that between the time you mixing in the honey and you drinking the tea, the honey does not have time to degrade too much.
You will still get the benefits of honey, even when using it in tea.
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We like to think that it is better than organic. We are not under the official organic supervision of the government.
Why not? We have seriously considered moving to the organic label, but the regulation for organic honey are a bit insane in our opinion. They focus on things that do not matter much to the quality of honey all the while neglecting things that do matter.
For instance, it is still allowed in in organic honey production to use styrofoam honey boxes for the hives. Only the overwintering boxes need to have natural materials on the inside. So organic does not consider the possible contamination of micro-plastics form the hive.
Another main reason is that organic requires to use organic sugar for winter feed. That makes no sense whatsoever, and indeed has questionable environmental side-effects. This forces organic beekeepers to import sugar from overseas (mostly Brazil), because there is no organic sugar producer in Finland. That is questionable on environmental grounds, if nothing else. It also needlessly increases production costs a lot.
Furthermore, it does not make the slightest difference to the honey what kind of sugar is fed to the bees for overwintering. This is purely based on the principle in the EU regulation that all animals in organic production need to be fed organic feed. That principle makes total sense in agriculture, where it really matters what chickens or pigs or cows eat to the quality of their eggs or meat or milk. However in the case of honey, it makes no sense at all, because the bees do not produce honey from their own body, but from nectar they collect in nature. But more importantly, none of the winter feed ever ends up in the honey, because the bees consume it during the winter, and any leftovers are removed from the hives in the spring.
On top of that, it is not even the same bees that make the honey in the summer as the ones that ate the winter feed, because the generation that overwinters dies in the spring and a completely new generation of bees will make the honey in the summer. Those bees never even have anything to do with the winter feed.
To anyone who can think for themselves rather than just following rules, this is crazy.There are several other reasons why we have so far decided not to go officially organic, but I shall leave it at that.
Organic is all about paperwork and blindly following procedures to the letter. It is not about quality. They pretend that following the procedures will automatically lead to a cleaner product, but that is just an assumption that is not tested.
We prefer to use our expertise in environmental science and our own understanding of the bees and honey production to focus on what really matters: animal welfare (organic still allows to use a gas-powered leaf-blower to harvest honey), all natural materials (better than organic) and fresh wax. Our method of not using old wax is at least as good as what is required by organic rules, and we anyway take care to set up our apiaries in clean environments where they are surrounded by mostly forests or organic agriculture, so that makes no difference.
Finally we do not just rely on procedure, but we test our honey in a laboratory to make sure it is clean. The laboratory tests we get done are testing to organic limits, but the limits for how much contamination is allowable in organic honey do not even matter, because the tests literally detected no contaminants at all in our honey.
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Honeybees make beeswax to build their home made of waxcomb. They store the nectar they gather from flowers in this honeycomb. Freshly made beeswax is almost white, and turns yellow from particles it absorbs from honey and pollen. After a long time of use, the wax slowly turns brown, as it absorbs more and more particles.
The older the wax gets, the less well it absorbs any further particles, and eventually some components actually dilute back into the honey. Virgin beeswax is completely clean, hence it is the most efficient at absorbing possible impurities, and therefore the purest and best quality honey comes from freshly built, virgin wax comb. Even though we have one of the cleanest environments in the world, we make double sure our honey is as clean as can be, therefore we use fresh wax comb exclusively.
Old dark wax comb does not make fresh tasting honey. Sometimes customers as me why our honey is so much tastier than others. I am convinced it has a lot to do with using only fresh wax in the honey boxes.
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Comb honey can be eaten as is. Take a bite, or cut a piece off to eat. The wax comb of our comb honey is pure freshly built beeswax without wax foundation. That means it is thin and clean and can be eaten with the honey. Some people prefer to eat the wax, others prefer to throw it out, like chewing gum. It’s just a matter of preference.
Comb honey can also be used in a smoothie or even on breakfast cereal or a porridge.
It is not a good idea to add comb honey to a hot tea, because the wax will melt and float to the top where it may make flakes and be unsightly. It will also stick to the cup when it cools down and it will be hard to clean. We recommend using our smooth honey to sweeten your tea instead.
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European honeybees (apis melifera) naturally live in cavities of hollow tree trunks. The beehives we build are an approximation of a tree trunk, but it allows us to open the hives to manage the bees and harvest the honey in a non-destructive manner and without disturbing the bees much.
Some other bee species around the world build their nests out in the open in warm climates. European honeybees do not do that. A beeswarm can hang out in a tree in the open for a while, but only while they are scouting for a suitable cavity to move into.
So beekeepers do not trap bees in a box. We provide them with a box that is suitable for them to live in, so that they choose to live there. The entrance of the hive is wide open at all times, so the bees could leave if they decided they didn’t like the box we provide.
In case the conditions in the hive are not to their liking, they do indeed leave. This is called absconding, when the whole colony leaves. This is different from swarming, where only part of the colony leaves with he old queen. Swarming is the bees natural way to multiply. This has nothing to do with them not liking their living conditions.
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Absolutely not! Not only is that totally unethical, it is also illegal in Finland.
This is a question that often gets asked by customers that originally come from other parts in the world, particularly from the middle-east. These customers are very critical because they are well aware of how much fakery is done with honey around the world, so I understand the question.
I have also encountered the misconception that honey is crystallized because there is sugar added to it. That is absolutely false.
On the contrary: one way stop honey from crystallizing would be to add a sugar syrup to it!
There are liquid honey products on the market that have syrup in them to stay liquid. These should be labelled as “honey product”, not as honey.
It is a well known problem that there is a lot of fake or stretched honey on the world market. This is usually done with an inverted sugar solution. The internet is full of supposed methods how one can test if honey is real or not. None of these methods work – at all. The only way to test honey for authenticity is in a laboratory. There is no reliable home test.
The way to be sure to get real honey is to buy from a local trusted source. We hope to be one such trustworthy source.
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Not during the summer!
We do feed the bees after the honey harvest, so that they can fill up their entire nest with winter feed, so that they have enough to get through to spring. The winter is long in Finland, so it is necessary to feed the bees to get them through the winter.
We never feed the bees when the honey boxes are one the hive. The honey gets harvested first, and only after all the honey boxes come off the hive, do we put feeders on in the fall. That way feed never gets mixed in the honey.
Why do you need to feed, if all you take is the bee’s surplus honey, you ask? Good question!
Our bees overwinter in the two lowest boxes of the beehive. This is called the brood nest, where the queen lays eggs and they grow more bees. The boxes above that are honey boxes. That is where the bees store their surplus honey. They also store some honey in the lower boxes, and that is theirs to keep. Some beekeepers also harvest that honey, but we leave that to our bees. However, that is not enough for them to get through the winter. If we left an extra box of honey on top, that would be too big a space for them to deal with during the cold, so that is not an option either.
What the bees need at the end of the summer is to fill up the entire bottom boxes with food. That is when we feed them. This also means they run out of space to raise brood, and that is a good thing, because then they get into wintering mode quicker, and it helps us with managing the dreaded varroa mite.
There is also the theory that syrup made from white sugar is better for the bees during the long winter than honey, because it is pure energy without all the other goodness that is in honey (pollen, minerals etc.) This means that it will not fill up the bees’ bellies so quickly and give them less urge to go to the bathroom. Bees to not defecate inside the hive, so they need to wait for warm enough weather in the spring to fly outside to relieve themselves. That can take many months, so the pure energy of sugar is maybe preferable for that purpose.
In any case, the bees will have eaten virtually all the feed in the spring, and if there is any left, it gets removed from the hive before the summer, so no feed ever gets mixed in with the honey.
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No! 🙂
Honey form large commercial packers that mix many sources together tastes average and pretty much the same all the time.
Honey from small scale producers tastes different every year, because the weather during the summer affects what flowers are blooming for how long, and wether they make any nectar or not. Certain flowers need certain conditions to make nectar.
If it is hot and dry fro a prolonged period of time, the flowers do not have enough moisture to produce any nectar, so even though they are flowering, there may not be any of their nectar in the honey that year.Therefore artisanal local honey always tastes different.
There is also clear differences between mono-floral honeys, that is honey from a single flower species. There is a clear difference between the for instance dandelion honey and heather honey and lingonberry honey and rapeseed honey.
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We pack our honey for shipping with the same philosophy as we do the rest of our business, that is: properly. We use only paper-based packing materials, including the protective wrapping material and void-fill. We even use paper tape to tape the box shut. No plastic. 100% recyclable.
The rest of the details about shipping are described in the terms and conditions of the shop.
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Yes, of course!
If you are a reseller and you want our honey in your shop please contact us for a quote.
If you are able to order from Kesko, our Smooth Finnish Honey is available through their logistics network. For all other honey products, please contact us directly.
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Congratulations! Old folk lore has it, that a bee swarm landing on your property brings good luck.
But you probably don’t want to keep the bees there. If you live within a short driving distance (< 10 km), give us a call, and we’ll see if we can remove the swarm.
If the swarm is inside a built structure (inside a chimney or a wall) we do not have the means to remove them, unfortunately.
If you are located in Finland, but not close by, check the swarm catchers of the Finnish Beekeeping Association: https://hunaja.net/kysy-meilta/loysitko-mehilaisparven/
There you can find a map with beekeepers near you that are able to catch swarms, including their contact details.