7 reasons to switch to raw local honey (and what the science actually says)

Every bottle of honey starts the same way: bees, flowers and a lot of work. What happens after it leaves the hive is where raw honey and most shelf honey part ways. Here are seven reasons people who try raw local honey rarely go back. Each one is backed by a source you can check at the bottom of this page.

1. It is honey exactly as the hive made it

There is no federal legal definition of raw honey in the United States. The industry standard comes from the National Honey Board, which defines raw honey as honey as it exists in the beehive, or as obtained by extraction, settling or straining without adding heat. That is the whole recipe for ours: take it from the comb, let it settle, strain out the wax, and stop there.

2. The pollen stays in

Fine filtering makes honey crystal-clear and slower to crystallize, but it also strips out pollen. When Food Safety News had more than 60 jars from U.S. stores tested by a Texas A&M pollen specialist in 2011, 76% of samples from major grocery chains and 100% of the drugstore brands contained no pollen at all. Every sample from farmers markets and co-ops had it. Pollen is also how honey is traced to its flowers and region. Remove it, and you remove the evidence of where the honey came from.

3. The natural enzymes are not cooked out

Bees add enzymes to nectar as they turn it into honey, including invertase, diastase and glucose oxidase. These are sensitive to heat: research on heated honey shows enzyme activity dropping and HMF (a heat-breakdown compound) rising as temperature and time go up, with glucose oxidase the most fragile of the three. Honey that is warmed to speed up bottling loses some of what the bees put in. Raw honey never goes through that step.

4. It carries natural antioxidants

Honey contains plant compounds called phenolics that act as antioxidants. A University of Illinois study found antioxidant levels varied widely by floral source, and that darker honeys generally scored highest. Because raw local honey changes with what is in bloom, no two harvests are quite the same in color, flavor or makeup.

5. A spoonful for a cough is backed by research

Honey for a cough is one of the few home remedies with solid research behind it. A 2018 Cochrane review found honey probably relieves children's cough symptoms better than no treatment or placebo. A 2020 University of Oxford review of 14 trials found honey improved upper respiratory symptoms, especially cough frequency and severity, compared with usual care. The UK's National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) lists honey as a self-care option for acute cough in people over one year old. Honey is a food, not a medicine: see a doctor for a cough that lingers or worries you.

6. You know exactly who made it

Honey is one of the most commonly faked foods in the world. In a 2021–22 EU investigation, 46% of honey samples tested at European borders were suspected of being bulked out with cheap sugar syrups. The simplest protection is to buy from a beekeeper you can name. Our bottles carry our address, 255 Sachs Road, Gettysburg, because we are happy for you to know exactly where your honey comes from.

7. It keeps bees working in your own backyard

Adams County is home to Pennsylvania's largest fruit-growing industry, and orchards like these depend on bees for pollination. Buying honey from a local beekeeper helps keep healthy colonies in the county: the same bees that help the region's flowers, gardens and crops.

One claim we will not make

You may have heard that local honey cures seasonal allergies. The research does not support that yet, and we would rather tell you so. We wrote up what the studies actually found in a separate article.

A safety note

Never give honey, raw or otherwise, to babies under 12 months old. The CDC warns it can cause infant botulism. For everyone over one, enjoy it.