"CERTIFIED NATURALLY GROWN" WILDFLOWER HONEY

The 2014 honey harvest from Pampatike Organic Farm is SOLD OUT. Please check back in July 2015.

PRICE: $10.00 per pound in glass jars. Shipping charge is extra.

 

INFORMATION: The honey is non-GMO; chemical free; certified naturally grown (inspected & certified); raw with pollen; unheated & unprocessed; wildflower from our 400 organic acres (mix of organic gardens, pasture, pollinator cover plants, and natural woodlands). Here is a link to pictures (with captions) showing the honey extraction process.

Consult health guides for health benefits of honey with pollen. An inconvenience of cold-processed honey with pollen is that the honey may crystallize sooner than heat-treated, pollen-free. If this happens, you can gently warm the honey in a warm water to melt the crystals without loosing quality.

About Our Honey Bees. We maintain the bee hives using "organic" methods, using only natural products (such as wintergreen oil, garden mint, and garlic) to repel pests that can damage or destroy the bee hives. We use screened bottom boards which provide excellent ventilation for the hives; plus parasitic mites and other pests fall out of the hive through the screen and cannot get back. We use "Beetle Jails" to trap Small Hive Beetles, an invasive species that is migrating north through the United States. The traps use apple cider vinegar as an attractant and vebetable-based mineral oil to trap and drown the beetles. We use organic methods to trap Wax Moths and Japanese Hornets which prey on honey bee colonies and larvae in hives. Our hives are inspected and approved under the U.S. "Certified Naturally Grown" program.

We use a "hands-off" approach to raising the bees, meaning that we only go into the hives periodically, not bi-weekly like most commercial apiarists do. Our hives are healthy, gentle, happy, and thriving. We have not experienced "Colony Collapse Disorder" which is thought to be brought on by a combination of an invasive virus, use of pesticides, and stress to the colony.

Honey bee queen rearing and breeding is natural. If a hive raises a new queen, she will usually fly 2+ miles away to mate with a drone from somewhere else. We do not use artificial insemination.

No pesticides are used or around in the bee hives or anywhere else on the farm. No "Bee Go" is used to make bees leave the honey supers before honey extraction (Bee Go is a chemical repellent used by many commercial apiarists to drive the bees away from the honey supers so the apiarists can remove the honey). Instead, we put an old-fashion "Bee Escape" board below the bottom honey super and the brood super for a day before honey extraction -- the funnel apparatus on the board allows the bees to leave the honey super but they cannot get back into the honey super until the escape is removed.

Extraction is a very quick process and yes, the bees are a bit angry when we take away & mess up the honey supers. But when the honey supers are returned to the hive minus the honey (within a few hours), the bees get busy cleaning things up, rebuilding the honey supers, and calm down. We always leave behind enough honey in the supers (~ 60 lbs) to sustain the colony for the winter. Plus we supplement the colonies by feeding them sugar syrup with organic wintergreen oil, sea salt, and garlic to ensure they survive in cold weather.

Our honey is cold processed using a motorized honey extractor. The honey is strained once through stainless steel mesh (no cotton lint) and is stored in 60 lb honey buckets. Orders are filled as received.

Some other honey facts: Honey has a higher sweetening power than sugar. Honey will not spoil unless contaminated with moisture. Pampatike honey retains pollen which may make it crystallize sooner than commercial ultra-strained, heat-treated honey. Raw honey is an excellent source of instant energy and is gentle on the stomach. It contains a mix of natural sugars which are absorbed quickly into the blood stream. Honey does not ferment in the stomach because, being an inverted sugar (a mixture of glucose and fructose), it is easily absorbed and there is no danger of bacterial invasion.

Eating raw honey also can help boost your immune system. The pollen (and naturally occurring, non-harmful environmental dust and molds) found in raw honey may stimulate a positive immune response to ward off these allergens. Folk lore holds that a tablespoon / day of raw, locally produced honey will greatly reduce the symptoms of "outdoor" allergies, especially from grass, tree, and flower pollen.

If you have any questions about the bees or their products, please e-mail: