Our Story
Our bees
Our bees are the most important part of our business. Therefore we treat them with the respect they deserve.
Beekeeping is a form of animal husbandry. Just like any other form of farming, there are many ways to go about it: One can take an industrial approach that maximises production or one can value the animals and chose a more ethical approach. Industrial methods of animal husbandry often sacrifice animal well-being and impact the quality of the resulting food product negatively – not to mention the environmental side effects!
On the other hand, one can place quality at the forefront, and this naturally leads to methods that respect the animals and the environment.
We focus on quality and ethics, not quantity.
Beefriendly Beekeeping
When working with the bees, we treat them as kindly as possible. The bees respond the way they are treated. Beekeeping is much more fun when it is done in cooperation with the bees, rather than in an adversarial exploitation. We take care not to crush any bees when checking comb frames during regular inspections. We do not blow the bees out of the hive boxes with gas-powered leaf blowers to harvest the honey, as is often done in large scale operations. That shows a total lack of respect and is akin to keeping farm animals in a CAFO, and it is not OK.
We aim to use natural materials in our production. Our bees live in hives that are built from wood, that we mostly build ourselves. The European honeybee naturally lives in hollow tree trunks. Wooden hives are the nearest thing to a hollow tree, that is also manageable for a beekeeper.
A wooden enclosure is not only the bee’s natural choice, it is also a breathable natural material, unlike the light-weight styrofoam hive commonly used nowadays. It just does not feel right to us to keep our bees in what is essentially the same as a beer cooler box. We also do not want to risk having micro-plastics from synthetic hive materials ending up in our honey, so wood is the natural choice for us.
Our Honey
Luonnon Kulta means Nature’s Gold. We make sure our honey lives up to its name!
Our honey is a premium product: pure, unadulterated, just the way the bees made it. We do not heat or filter our honey in the process of extracting and packaging it. Heat is harmful to the healthy enzymes in honey. Lab-tests proved that Luonnon Kulta honey is has healthy enzymes and is free from pesticides and GMOs.
The taste of the honey depends on the flowers that the bees have collected the nectar from. The consistency of the honey in a jar depends on the skill and effort of the beekeeper.
Most wildflower honey that has not been heat treated and filtered will crystallise. All we can do is influence how it crystallises by creating fine crystalline structure on purpose, rather than random and often coarse crystals that are unpleasant on the tongue.
The bees and the flowers create the delicious taste, and we make sure that Luonnon Kulta honey feels is smooth and creamy on the tongue.
FRESH WAX COMB
The best quality raw honey comes from freshly built wax comb. To preserve this purity and guarantee the finest, most delicious taste, we use exclusively fresh virgin wax comb in our beehives.
This truly sets Luonnon KULTA Honey apart!
Building fresh wax costs the bees a lot of effort and it takes a lot of nectar. This means we get less honey, but fresh wax comb guarantees the purest quality and best tasting honey.
Honeybees make beeswax to build their home made of beeswax comb. 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 and eventually black, as it absorbs more and more particles.
Real, unadulterated beeswax is a highly valued commodity. Traditionally beekeepers value ready-built honeycomb and use it for as along as possible. Normally, beekeepers give empty honey comb to the bees to fill up again and again after extracting the honey. This saves the bees a lot of time and notably increases the honey harvest, because the bees need a lot of nectar to create new wax.
At Luonnon KULTA, we let the bees build fresh wax every year, and we do not re-use old, dark honeycomb in our honey boxes. Not only does this make the honey better, but it also keeps our bees healthier.
QUALITY GUARANTEE
We even have our honey tested by an independent laboratory, to make sure its quality really is as good as we think!
In addition to the normal honey parameters (humidity, acidity, and HMF) we also had tests done to guarantee that our honey is free from GMO’s and pesticides. A tripple-screening test for GMO showed that Luonnon Kulta honey is free from GMO’s.
The pesticide tests screens for >700 pesticide residues according to organic standard and showed that Luonnon Kulta honey is free from pesticides and exceeds the organic standard requirements.
Luonnon Kulta honey is also approved for the HYVÄÄ SUOMESTA label. This label tells that the honey is 100% from Finland and that it meets the quality standard. Our lab analysis showed that we exceed the requirements for that standard by quite a margin.
The enzymes in our honey are shown to be in good condition: the proxy-indicator for enzyme health in honey HMF (Hydroxymethylfurfural) for our honey this year is 4.6 (which is low, i.e. very good). The maximum HMF allowed for the Hyvää Suomesta quality standard is 15 mg/kg, and the maximum allowed in the honey directive is 40mg/kg.
The diastase activity (a measurement of the enzyme that converts starch to short-chain sugars) of our honey is 32,5DN (a high number is good). The minimum required according to the Honey Quality and International Regulatory Standards is 8DN, or even 3DN for some monofloral honeys with low .
These numbers tell that our honey is fresh and has not been heat-treated, because these enzymes are sensitive to heat treatment and poor storage conditions.
Our honey has also been tested by the Finnish food authority for other residues and come out clean.
The ultimate quality of our raw honey results from careful management and attention to detail. Many contaminants in beehives are put there by the beekeepers themselves, so even the cleanest environment does not help, if the beekeeper is not careful in his methods. Therefore we pay great attention to detail regarding not only the natural hive materials, but also for example the clean natural wood chips and tinder conk we burn in the smoker, to the fresh wax, avoiding plastics in the honey extraction process, all the way to the high-end materials chosen for packaging.
ARTISANAL HONEY
Artisanal, local honey has natural variation that gives it characteristic colour and flavour, like terroir in wine. And just like vintages of good wine, the flavour varies from season to season. Industrially produced honey, on the other hand, is blended from honey that comes from all over the place, which averages out differences and results in a more average consistency and taste. Industrial honey is also flash-heated in the process of mixing and packaging it.
Our honey, on the other hand, is is not warmed beyond the temperature that is inside the beehives. Our process is very simple: We take the honey comb from the hives. Then we spin the combs to extract the honey and we let it clarify for a day or two and then we strain it, to remove impurities, like small pieces of wax etc. Unlike filtering, straining with a fine sieve does not remove pollen from the honey.
Then we induce the cristallization process by adding some honey that has the crystalline structure that we want to achieve and then we mix it at low temperature and low speed for a short duration. After a few days of mixing intermittently for a few minutes each time, the honey is ready to be packed into jars. That’s it! Raw honey. That way we ensure that all the naturally healthy enzymes are preserved in our honey.
We pack all our honey by hand into glass jars. Our honey is so fine and smooth that it is no problem to fill it into jars at room temperature.
SMOOTH OR LIQUID
The composition of sugars in the honey varies depending on the nectar source. Honey consists of over twenty varieties of natural sugars, mainly grape sugar (glucose) and fruit sugar (fructose), as well as pollen and enzymes and some vitamins. Honey does not contain saccharose, the sugar in white table sugar. Depending on the ratio of fructose to glucose, some honey will crystallize rapidly and others can stay liquid much longer before they too will eventually crystallize.
By carefully controlling the crystallization, we can guarantee that our honey is fine and smooth. Neglecting that process results in a coarse and solid honey.
However, we also offer some liquid honeys. We can do this by choosing the honey varieties carefully such that they are of the variety that stays liquid for a long time. Eventually they too will crystallize, but they take a long time, so that they can be eaten before they go solid.
Some unifloral honeys, like our Kurjenrahka wilderness honey will stay liquid for a long time. Heather honey is naturally gel.like and stays that way for a long time.
We are proud of the high quality of honey we produce, and we do not have anything to hide from our customers: not the wooden beehives nor the way we handle the bees, nor our process of production, nor our final product. It’s as good as it can be! Nature makes its own gold in the form of honey.
One bee produces only half a teaspoon of honey during its whole life. We owe it to them not mess it up! 😉
The Beekeeper
I started beekeeping because I wanted more pollinators for our garden and fruit trees. Honey was initially only a byproduct. However, it very quickly became clear that I really enjoy working with bees. The first honey harvest showed that this endeavour also creates an absolutely delicious food product.
At the time I started keeping bees I found myself at a transition point in life. After working in academic research as an environmental scientist for years, it was time for a change. I got some professional training as a master beekeeper, and Luonnon Kulta became the exciting new endeavour I have embarked on. This business merges my love for the environment with my love for pure, delicious food.
Not only do I get to work outside when the weather is good, I also get to enjoy the reactions and feedback of people when they taste our honey. That is the best reward!
Luonnon Kulta is a small scale artisanal operation and has become a bit of a family business. We intend to keep the number of hives small enough so that we can keep working respectfully with the bees, and do not need to make compromises of scale that would ultimately negatively affect the quality of our product, or be incompatible with our ethics. We create a premium product that is as good as it can be. We guarantee to keep it that way.
At Luonnon Kulta, our uncompromising focus on quality starts at the way we treat our bees, on to how we handle the honey they produce, all the way to the packaging and customer service. Luonnon Kulta means “Nature’s Gold” in Finnish, and that is exactly what we pack into our jars!