Honey
The Organic standards set by the UK Soil Association for honeys are not Primal Diet friendly at all.
The standards specific to beekeeping, point 15.3.5 states that bees can be fed sugar syrup with the permission of the Soil Association. And heating the honey is common practice.
Rowse Honey: All Rowse honey organic and non organic, is heated and filtered during the packing process and as far as I am aware all honey sold in major retailers will also be heated and filtered.
When honey arrives at the honey packer, it is invariably fully or partly crystallised. This is a perfectly normal characteristic as the glucose (dextrose) component of honey naturally wants to come out of solution and form crystals.
The first stage of honey refining is to melt the glucose crystals to make the honey liquid. This requires the honey to be heated to a minimum 50 degrees C. In our experience, even heating to 50C will not prevent the honey starting to re-crystallise within a few weeks or months depending on the honey type. This would be unacceptable visually to most honey consumers and UK retailers where we need to achieve 6-9 months life before crystallisation starts. We also need to melt the wax content of the honey to be able to filter hive debris and visible particles out of the honey. This also requires 50-55 degrees C.
The standard agreed with the Soil Association for Organic honeys is that honey must not be heated to above 60C and must not exceed 50C for more than 8 hours.
Even if the honey is not filtered as Seggiano Honey, sold in Planet Organic, there's always the sugar problem.
Seggiano Honey: Mauro does feed the bees sugar during very hard long winters, only in the case if otherwise the hive would die. It doesn't happen often. Unfortunately this year the problem is the opposite - there hasn't been a winter in Italy and the bees haven't had a dormant period and have continued working..... We hope for the best.
