If you don't know your beekeeper, you don't the honey you're eating!

Buy local honey...

It's the best kind because it comes from plants that are local to you live and work. If you buy from a local beekeeper you find out if the honey has been heated, pasteurized and force filtered. Heating, pasteurizing and force filtering rids the honey of many of the excellent properties left in the honey by the honeybees. It still tastes good, but processed honey is stripped of pollen, antioxidants and other vitamins and minerals that your body is craving.

Local, unprocessed honey can have bits of pollen included in the honey. This pollen has been suggested to be used by the human body much in the same way that vaccinations are used. Because pollen can cause allergies, the pollen in the honey causes the body to build up immunity to airborne pollen which is a cause of allergies that many people suffer.

Know your beekeeper!

If you don't know the beekeeper you never know where that honey came from. And you won't know whether chemicals have been used (if any) to medicate the bees. Do some research, find a local beekeeper and buy from him or her. It's well worth it.

One problem with local honey

Depending on what the honeybees were foraging on, you may buy some honey that crystallizes into a solid form. For some this is a problem. It gets thick and then it can get hard. This does NOT mean that the honey is bad or spoiled. It's just crystallized. Ice cubes are still water, crystallized honey is still honey. Don't heat it in the microwave though, warm it up slowly.

Honey from the same hive, jar on the left is liquid, jar on the right is crystallized

Same jars after the one on the right spent some time getting warm.

You can put it in the sunshine for a day or two. Or turn your oven on to the lowest setting before you go to bed. After the oven heats up, turn on the oven light, set the honey next to the oven light, close the oven and TURN OFF THE OVEN. In the morning it should be nice and soft. If not, do it again. Before you do any kind of heating, make sure you loosen the cap. If you don't you may have a messy "overpressurization event." Ask me how I know this. ;)