# Honey Filtering Myths.



## alleyyooper (Apr 22, 2005)

By Greg Martin from Line On Agriculture, of Aginfo.net

A new article out yesterday in the Food Safety News may have some people scratching their heads and wondering if they have been duped. The article by Andrew Schneider states that most store bought honey is...not honey. And his conclusion is that when ultra-filtering is used that removes the pollen and therefore it is no long honey. Bruce Boynton is the CEO for the National Honey Board and he says thats is very misleading.


BOYNTON: Heâs using the term ultra-filtering incorrectly. Heâs loosely using the term and throwing it around throughout the article. Itâs used incorrectly so itâs misleading. Ultra-filtration is a specific kind of filtration that is used in the food industry but itâs not generally used by the honey industry.


When ultra-filtration is used on honey it truly does become something other than honey. Many foreign companies use it as a clear sweetener for soft drinks and it is not marketed as honey.


BOYNTON: Generally in the United States ultra-filtration is not used. The packers in this country donât use ultra-filtration, itâs too expensive and they donât need to do it. They do filter honey through different methods. Certain types of filtration does remove pollen but thatâs not a bad thing or illegal thing or wrong thing. 

In fact in the USDA grading standards for extracted honey, it talks about the removal of pollen grains and other particulates in honey as part of the filtration process




Most U.S. consumers prefer to purchase clearer honey.


BOYNTON: They donât want a cloudy product and it also delays granulation. Any particulates on honey including pollen will help honey crystalize faster on the shelf and people want a clear, liquid, golden honey on the shelf. We do have information on our website about filtration. He also makes the claim that honey that has been - and again he use the term ultra-filtered and therefore removing the pollen, itâs no longer honey and the headline of his article I think is outrageous.


But to again clarify, ultra-filtration of honey does make it into something else but then it is not marketed as honey. The story also mentions that more than 60 jars of honey from everyday stores were tested and most did not contain pollen. Boynton says...


BOYNTON: Tests show that most store honey isnât honey - well he sampled some honey and tested it and it didnât have pollen but thatâs a normal process of filtration methods that are used in this country but for the most part honey thatâs on the shelves is honey. And just because it doesnât have pollen in it doesnât mean itâs not honey.


For more information visit www.honey.com.


 Al


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## tom j (Apr 3, 2009)

this is one of the biggest problem's ,, some one that is some what known , or has a way of putting it out to a lot of people , knows little fact , get's information but wrong information , from who knows were , and thinks the this information is the gospel ,


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## alleyyooper (Apr 22, 2005)

BOYNTON, Is the head of the national Honey board. it was the USDA thaty published the test results on filtered honey not being real honey.

Is a tomato with out seeds a Tomato?

 Al


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## ET1 SS (Oct 22, 2005)

Multiple friends sent me links to that article.

I have been using pollen traps to collect pollen in my hives. They do not work as well as I had hoped they would.

I add extra pollen back into the honey as I bottle it. My customers seem to like it this way. They can 'see' the pollen.

If that is what it takes for them to prefer my honey, then so be it.


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## tom j (Apr 3, 2009)

the USDA?? no wounder our food is so mess est up ,, when they don't know what honey is , now we don't have to wounder were the normal person gets the weird idea's


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## Paquebot (May 10, 2002)

Scratching my head here! Some reasoning tells me that if something is removed from pure honey, it can no longer be called pure honey. Is that where this is going? If it could be filtered down to totally lacking any color, what would one call it? 

Martin


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## copperkid3 (Mar 18, 2005)

Syrup......:shrug:


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## indypartridge (Oct 26, 2004)

Paquebot said:


> Scratching my head here! Some reasoning tells me that if something is removed from pure honey, it can no longer be called pure honey.


Perhaps part of the confusion results from the use of the word "pure". Maybe "raw" would be better. Raw honey hasn't been filtered (maybe strained, to get bug parts out), but still contains pollen and other "impurities".

Strictly speaking, bees make honey from nectar and pollen is not an "ingredient".


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## Paquebot (May 10, 2002)

Hmmmmmm. Google _ultrafiltered honey_ to gain very interesting knowledge. Seems that there is considerable agreement that much of the value in honey IS the pollen. And indeed it would be "ultra-clear". Have never seen that in any honey and the closest to clear would be some of the Sue Bee products and not all stores around here carry that brand.

Martin


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## ET1 SS (Oct 22, 2005)

Paquebot said:


> Hmmmmmm. Google _ultrafiltered honey_ to gain very interesting knowledge. Seems that there is considerable agreement that much of the value in honey IS the pollen. And indeed it would be "ultra-clear". Have never seen that in any honey and the closest to clear would be some of the Sue Bee products and not all stores around here carry that brand.
> 
> Martin


'filter' honey enough and I am sure that eventually you will have a clear substance.

Bees bring in a wide assortment of stuff with the nectar [flavors, colors, nutrients, etc] that all goes into honey. But if you could refine that away you would eventually come to pure sugar.

Pollen is not clear, so having pollen in honey will never allow it to be clear.


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## akane (Jul 19, 2011)

I still don't consider store bought honey to be honey. I call it sugar goo. It has no flavor or texture beyond sweet. There's nothing good to it. I could use corn syrup and get the same result. I used to eat honey from my grandpa's hives that was so unfiltered you'd find bee parts in it and it tasted so good. Since I'm allergic to bees which has me debating the safety of a hive we buy minimally filtered raw honey in 5gallon buckets at this local annual event.


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## Paquebot (May 10, 2002)

I think that when anyone here suspects that a certain brand of honey isn't what it says, why not publish it on this forum? We keep hearing of it but never find it in the stores. Why is everyone keeping it such a big secret? If it's out there, tell us all about it so it can be avoided. If not, it's just one more Internet myth. 

Last time I checked in our local supermarkets, we've got a choice of 4 or 5 from Wisconsin, 1 from Minnesota, and 1 from Iowa. All have their own web sites and no reason to suspect any wrong-doing by any of them. If they did, and caught, they are out of business. There are channels to go through when any honey is suspected of not being as labeled. If we were to suspect everything except from only one local beekeeper, than anyone here who produces honey must also be suspect.

Martin


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## alleyyooper (Apr 22, 2005)

I've posted here several times of companies like Sue Bee honey getting caught buying chinese honey that entered the country thru the east coast ports from countries where it was relabeled.


 Al


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## Paquebot (May 10, 2002)

Would all of your friends on Beesource also say not to buy Sue Bee products when many of them are Sue Bee suppliers? And how long ago was it that that incident allegedly happened with Sue Bee? And is there a chance that any such Sue Bee products on store shelves now? I personally had not heard about Sue Bee being involved in that and I think that the few honey enthusiasts which we have here would appreciate seeing some information on it. Not that I buy Sue Bee products but a bee forum should be promoting the use of honey rather than suggesting that there is not a safe honey source anywhere in the country.

Martin


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## wvstuck (Sep 19, 2008)

I just simply don't think of store bought honey as honey... Pasteurizing or super heating the honey kills the natural antibiotic ingredients. Honey comes from a hive, not from a store shelf. There are bee keepers everywhere in this country. 

If you want to find pure honey, unadulterated by the FDA, USDA and Corporate Profiteering... Just do a Google search for a bee keepers club in your county and contact that person for a list of suppliers.

I have plenty of honey on my shelf that is not clear, some has sediment in the bottom consisting of small particles of wax and pollen... But I filtered it using old manual methods of draining and straining through cheese cloth. Great Stuff!


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## Paquebot (May 10, 2002)

I was in 3 different supermarkets yesterday and surprise, surprise! Just about every drop of honey in them comes from apiaries endorsed by the moderator of this forum! We have been informed to go the the National Honey Board to find local apiaries to buy from. In Michigan, for example, there are 16 listed. One sells imported bulk only, 3 sell only on site, and 12 bottle for retail and wholesale. In Wisconsin, 11 are listed. One sells only bulk and the other 10 bottle for retail and wholesale. Ten in Wisconsin and 12 in Michigan have their products on store shelves. Can anyone tell me why their honey is deemed no good after they bottle it for those who don't live close enough to buy it right from the beekeeper? I could take a map and lay out a 25 mile radius around me and a half dozen apiaries will be right near the edge. Telling me that a 50-mile round trip is required to buy the same thing which is available within walking distance is not the way to promote honey use. 

I'm tired of people bashing our state beekeepers and trying to wrongly convince everyone that they are all crooks. When I say that all honey for sale here is honey, it means that I've read every label and know where it comes from. One thing noted yesterday is that I could not locate any honey from Minnesota but there were 2 new ones from Wisconsin. One Wisconsin brand was missing but I suspect that it was possibly due to seasonal shortage. The only non-Wisconsin honey was from Iowa. I don't care how many crooked beekeepers there are in MI or WV or any other state. We haven't found any reason to not trust any of those in Wisconsin and I'll defend every single one of them every time that the topic comes up on this forum or HT in general. 

Martin

Amend the above! One of the new ones on the store shelves was Hauke out of Marshfield. NHB lists them as selling only bulk wholesale. All 11 apiaries listed for Wisconsin now have their honey available for the general public.


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## Paquebot (May 10, 2002)

Still wondering how to attack the constant attacks against the honey industry. Perhaps a thread like this, with "myths" in the topic is apropos. We get some who say that their store-bought doesn't taste like honey. What honey? NHB has data on about 175 different floral honeys and not all are listed. Knowing that netted me almost 2 gallons of pure buckwheat from someone who didn't think that honey could be black and smell like burned rubber. I can go down that list and claim having enjoyed probably 20 or so, a lot more when combined. 

My personal standard would be from a monster tree which had a swarm when my father was a child and cut down 50 or so years later when the tree died. There will never be a taste like that again. By the time that tree was dropped, I'd been eating wild honey for over 30 years and never enjoyed that taste before or after. I know of another swarm that is possibly older but nobody will ever taste a drop without a lot of dynamite since it's in a limestone cave. There may be honey in there that's 100 years old. No other honey in the world could taste like whatever was in there. 

This leads to what everyone has available in their supermarkets. We DID more or less ultra-filter honey years ago. Using double thickness of a cotton sheet behind the wood stove resulted in honey where one could almost read a newspaper through a quart jar. There were some ancient basswoods on the farm and that was the only way to get that pollen out. Perhaps some other flower may have been the culprit but basswood always got the blame. I did note that most of the honey available in the 3 chains yesterday was normal amber color. One was slightly lighter and I thought that it was Hauke's, new name on the shelves. Bingo! Two of their 4 honeys are basswood and Dutch white clover. Without buying a jar, I personally would know what to expect if that was what the mix was. 

Advice from someone who has enjoyed honey on 3 continents is to first learn some of the basic differences in the types of honey produced in this country. They range from almost black to virtually clear. Then read the labels on the container before you buy it. If it is supposed to be clover, light color, and from an apiary 25 miles away, you are going to get locally-produced light clover honey and pretty much what is expected from a lot of Sue Bee containers. If the same apiary has a darker "wildflower" honey, you won't know what it's going to taste like until you taste it. That's the way it works and why I'm still waiting to find out was in a pint that I bought last May. If you are surrounded by a countryside which has something which invariably produces something "off", it's going to be "off" and not a thing you or the beekeeper can do about it. The only thing that's guaranteed is that it will not taste like Sue Bee's light clover honey and they've been the standard longer than I've had a special love for honey! 

Martin


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## tom j (Apr 3, 2009)

this is what has me Scratching my head here! the fda will not make the step to say what """" pure honey """""" is but goes to the back door and trys to say what is not honey

The FDA recently rejected the application for a standard of identity for honey, concluding that the petition did not provide reasonable grounds for the FDA to adopt the Codex standard for honey. It also concluded that the agency's existing enforcement tools are sufficient to address the concerns of the petition and "the establishment of a standard of identity would not aid the agency in its enforcement efforts or help insure industry compliance."

The argument presented in the original petition was that a standard of identity for honey would promote honesty and fair dealing in the interest of consumers, because consumers are confused about what the term "honey" means in terms of the food's composition. The FDA concluded that establishing a standard of identity for honey would not provide additional assurance that consumers would be informed any better. The label should provide any information on what might be added to the honey and it is the label that should alleviate any confusion that consumers might have.

While it is certainly true that some products are mislabeled, the proposed standard of identity would not provide any additional enforcement authority beyond what currently exists for improperly branded foods. The proposed goals are 1) informing consumers who are confused about what "honey" means in terms of the food's composition; 2) combating economic adulteration by aiding enforcement and industry compliance; and 3) promoting honesty and fair dealing within the food trade in general, where pure honey is highly valued as an ingredient in other foods. Those goals "can all be achieved using existing FDA enforcement tools" and concluded that a standard of identity for honey would not provide any "additional support toward the achievement of these goals."

While we in the industry tend to disagree, it will be a difficult hurdle to get the FDA to reconsider any time in the near future, so it will be necessary to continue efforts at the state level for individual standard of identity establishment.


Al


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## ET1 SS (Oct 22, 2005)

Paquebot said:


> ... Knowing that netted me almost 2 gallons of pure buckwheat from someone who didn't think that honey could be black and smell like burned rubber. I can go down that list and claim having enjoyed probably 20 or so, a lot more when combined.


LOL

We do not have much buckwheat here. My understanding is that it makes the honey a really dark red. If you hold a jar up to sunlight does it cast a reddish tint? It should.

We have a lot of knotweed, which makes our fall honey black. It smells like molasses and it has a distinct molasses flavor. Direct sunlight shining through a jar comes through as dark with no reddish tint.

It freaked us out the first time we saw that


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## Paquebot (May 10, 2002)

ET1 SS said:


> We do not have much buckwheat here. My understanding is that it makes the honey a really dark red. If you hold a jar up to sunlight does it cast a reddish tint? It should.


Buckwheat honey is supposedly a regional thing with most production in MN, NY, OH, PA, and WI. My windfall supply came from SD. Two NHB-recommended apiaries in WI handle it. Generally nobody wants it in within flight range unless that's all they want as it's guaranteed to darken the honey and give it a distinct "burnt rubber" aroma. Most around here comes from an Amish beekeeper who only sells bulk for re-bottling. It's been a long time since I've seen it any stores. 

And you are correct about the color. On a shelf, it is black. With back light, it's sort of a brownish-purple. Sets up solid very quickly. It goes good in tea but don't even think of using it in coffee! 

Martin


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