Hello Roy and All,

  I use the same basic method as Roy for the health food stores during harvest time. The real challenge is to be able to supply the stores with the same product 6 to 11 months after harvest. 

Roy wrote;  
 The real problem in the US is the heating for the filtering process. They crank
it up to 155 F filter and quick cool. It inverts the sugar and good-bye honey.
Its yellow but dead

When you reach a scale of selling in stores you quickly understand why the above is done.   Dyce in his original patent for creamed honey found a temperature of 150 F. was needed to completely eliminate  crystals. If you are to heat to 150 F. and not do serious damage to flavor you need to cool as rapid as possible.  Technically if the heating is not to 160 F. the above honey is not pasteurized from what I have read and if  the honey is only at 155 F. for a instant.
  
  Most packers operations running I have observed run the temperature for pasteurization at around 170 F.    Faster bottling is the reason I was told. 

Honey on supermarket shelves done as above can not be told from my health food grade on hot biscuits or pancakes.  Most consumers simply do not care to pay the extra price for health food grade , put up with the constant crystallizing of health food grade and many consumers are simply uninformed as to health benefits   of honey.   

Pressure filtering with a high micron filter removes quite a bit from the honey. Pressure filtering with earth even more. I do not know of a large packer which does not pressure filter honey. 

I never put down   supermarket  honey because of methods but will point out differences in methods of processing if asked by store owners. Supermarkets never ask.   When you have got a barrel of solid honey the only answer is to use heat to liquefy and if you want sparkling  clear  honey  you pressure filter. 

When you are supplying a huge number of stores you (in my opinion) do both. Competition in supermarkets is unreal. You can not compete with crystallizing honey and  organ honey ( bee parts included).

 It is kind of fun to try and figure out which bee part you are looking at such as part of wing, leg etc. in *organ honey* (as long as the jar has not got your label on it).

 If one looks close enough you can at times  find very small black specs in honey strained through nylon.    Informed buyers in health food stores never complain as they realize the process. 

I am always amazed the person which will complain about a small speck of beeswax in a jar will never complain if the speck is in a jar of chunk honey. Hmmm.

Has anyone ever been seriously injured by ingesting a bee part or small piece of beeswax?  I think not.

According to an issue of National Geographic magazine years ago some of the oldest and healthiest people in the world had a diet partly of raw honey. They sold the clear honey and consumed  the pollen filled  and bee organ honey.


Sincerely,
Bob Harrison 

 Ps. Please be careful when you put down supermarket honey as the suppliers are part of our industry and are only providing what the stores want. Only a very very small segment of the world wants health food grade honey. Uninformed customers shock me at times with things they have heard from uninformed beekeepers about supermarket honey. 

Rather than say supermarket pasteurized and pressure filtered honey is inferior just sell either your unprocessed  honey and point out the differences or direct the consumer to a nearby health food store selling local, not pressure heated or pasteurized honey. 

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