Production of honey

Honey harvesting should ideally take place at the end of the nectar flow, for example, after the alpine rose blooms. Before honey can be harvested, it must be checked to ensure it is ripe enough. The water content should not exceed 20%; 15 to 17% is ideal. The lower the water content, the lower the risk that the honey will begin to ferment.

The bees seal the mature honeycombs with wax caps. These caps must be removed before the honey is extracted, which can be done manually or with a machine.

After spinning, wax particles may still be present in the honey, which are removed using two honey sieves – one coarser and one finer. The fresh honey is then left to stand in the kettle for a few days to remove the foam created by the rising air bubbles.

Once the honey has been skimmed, it can either be immediately poured into jars or mechanically stirred. Stirring occurs after the crystallization has begun and usually twice a day for five to ten minutes each time (exception: black locust/acacia honey and forest honey are not stirred). Stirring breaks down the sugar crystals in the honey, giving it a smooth, finely creamy consistency. However, this purely mechanical treatment also has a slight influence on the flavor of the honey, as does heating crystallized honey.

Important: Be careful when buying honey, as promotional practices such as heating honey and microfiltration negatively impact its quality. Both are designed to keep honey liquid longer on store shelves, but they damage the valuable ingredients in the honey. Fancy labels like "noble" and "premium" don't improve the honey either. Your best bet is to look for transparent, verifiable information and products with clear origins.

Counterfeits: Some bees never see a single flower in their lifetime, but instead consume plenty of sugar water. By adding cheap fillers, production costs can be further reduced, and resourceful counterfeiters tinker with their honey blends until even laboratories can barely distinguish them from real honey. Therefore, it's better to ask exactly where the products on offer come from, how they were manufactured and transported, whether they were treated with heat or other processes, etc.