--- On Tue, 3/30/10, Grant Gillard <[log in to unmask]>  asked for definitions of "raw" and "pastuerized"."
 
Our bee club wrestled with the definition of "raw" for years.  Some members marketed their honey as raw right next to other members "regular" and in some cases the regular had less handling than the raw.  It was terribly confusing to customers.  
 
Unfortunately, existing definitions are remarkably unhelpful. The National Honey Board, for example, includes the definition "Commercially raw honey: honey as obtained by minimum processing" but never explains what ‘minimum processing’ is. There is no useful or universally accepted definition of raw honey. 
 
We finally adopted the following ‘bright line’ definition.  For any honey marketed at a club-sponsored event, "Raw honey is pure honey settled or coarse filtered only and never heated beyond the ambient temperature (95F).”  That definition is working well for us so far in northeast Ohio.
 
By that definition, even a slow, gentle heating to uncrystallize makes it no longer raw in our eyes.  It's still good honey but you market it differently.  And, yes, that does mean that certain varietals can never be sold as raw liquid - they crystallize too quickly.

We did talk about the fact that a hot summer day can get higher than 95F.  That's not generally the condition in the hive, though.  "Raw" is not merely unprocessed but as close to the conditions that the bees keep it in as we can get.  That's why we picked 95F - it's pretty close to the stable temperature that the bees maintain inside the hive.
 
We don't have anyone who markets their honey as pasteurized.  But unlike "raw", the National Honey Board does have a functional definition of pasteurization.  From www.honey.com/images/downloads/shelflife.pdf, "Recommended pasteurization treatments include flash pasteurization (170 °F for a few seconds) or heating at 145°F for 30 minutes."  Not sure why you'd want to but that's the standard I would use.
 
Mike Rossander
www.medinabeekeepers.com


      

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