Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) about honey
We sell only genuine, German bee honey. The honey was produced by the honey bee and gently extracted from the honeycomb (centrifuged).
No, our honey is not heated above the natural ambient temperatures at any time during production by the bees, nor when it is removed from the hive by the beekeeper, nor when it is filled into the jar. Even when the honey is spun, no heating takes place.
No, we never mix honeys together. Therefore, each honey is always unique at different times of the year and varies in taste depending on the flowers or trees that the honey bees fly to.
No, our honey is extracted exactly as the bees produced it. It is a purely natural product. No foreign substances are added, not even sugar syrup or similar. That would violate the legal purity requirement and also our own claim to offer a valuable natural product.
From our point of view, the price is fair for the customer and for us as beekeepers. The care of the bee colonies over the entire year is associated with a great deal of time and financial effort. The path to the finished honey in the jar is a very long one and requires a great deal of effort from the bee. For 1 kg of honey, the bees have to travel between 50,000 and 100,000 km. And a beekeeper also has to invest hundreds of hours a year for his bees to care for these high-performance workers and keep them healthy. Moreover, the supply of healthy, genuine bee honey in Germany is relatively low, while the demand is enormously high.
You can usually only get a small amount of honey from a small beekeeper like us. We have already had requests from buyers who wanted to buy hundreds of kilograms or even tons of honey. Such quantities can only be supplied by large beekeepers, but not by us. It is also not our claim to act in this way, as we do not want to produce honey industrially.
Real honey from the honey bee, which is untreated, crystallises after a few days or weeks. It also depends on the season and the type of honey. There are types of honey that crystallise faster than others. Crystallisation is a sign of high quality. Crystals do not mean that sugar has been added artificially. Industrial honey, on the other hand, is often filtered and heated to such a high temperature that it no longer crystallises. In the process, however, many valuable ingredients are lost.
If you heat honey, it becomes liquid again, as the crystals then dissolve. But you should be careful never to heat the honey above 40°C, because higher temperatures can quickly destroy the enzymes in the honey. Then some of the valuable ingredients would be destroyed. However, there are types of honey that cannot be made completely liquid again. These are often flower honeys from the spring. If you want liquid honey, it is always advisable to consume it relatively quickly so that it cannot crystallise in the first place. By the way, chestnut honey is a very late type of honey in the year, which takes a long time to crystallise. Always heat honey in a jar in a water bath. Never heat it in the microwave.
Yes, you can also freeze bee honey without hesitation. This slows down the crystallisation process and it remains liquid longer after thawing. Of course, this only works if the bee honey was still liquid before freezing. Do not worry about breaking the honey jar in the process. The water content of the honey is too low for this. So if you like liquid honey and want to store it for a longer period of time, you can build up a small stock this way.
This allows the beekeeper to stop the crystallisation process in a more targeted way and only very small crystals are formed. The honey does not lose any quality, but its appearance changes somewhat and it also tastes a little different. Especially very early honeys, e.g. from the first honey harvest, are often offered stirred.
The times when the beekeeper can extract the honey from the bees vary from year to year. As a rule, a first harvest can be expected in May or June. There is usually another harvest in July and, with a bit of luck, at the beginning of August. But then it is already over. The times are strongly related to the weather, the temperatures and the nectar supply on the flowering plants, or the honeydew on the trees.
It happens rarely, but it cannot be ruled out. Often a honey harvest is successful, but depending on the region, some beekeepers have experienced complete harvest failures. This can have many reasons, e.g. dry weather, if it is too warm too early or too cold for too long. Often in combination with other unfavourable circumstances.