Yes. And Freshly extracted, settled, and bottled honey should be. Over time honey will crystallize, and this can vary from days to years depending on the variety. With gentle heating to 35 - 40 degrees celsius ( the internal temperature of a bee hive) this process can be undone, without damaging any of the health benefits.
... With gentle heating to 35 - 40 degrees celsius ( the internal temperature of a bee hive) this process can be undone, without damaging any of the health benefits.
Not true. 30oC is a temperature of the nest. Nest does not have a honey. It is just waste of energy to keep comb with honey at 30oC especially in winter. I have comb honey, which is stored for almost a year - it did not crystallize. Crystallization somehow related to honey extraction. Once honey leave its "natural" place (honeycomb) it could crystallize, which, I believe did not affect its properties. ANY artificial heating shall remove FDA's "grade A" from the label. But, I guess, one could bring honey in Mohave desert and heat it up "naturally"... Sergey
Cotton Honey in South GA normally comes out of the comb nearly as clear as water. Strain the wax particles out and it's clear X's 2. Also has its own unique taste, but sugars fairly fast.
I WV locust honey is the closest thing to clear honey I have seen. I think the variety of plants has a lot to do with it. Our Poplar honey is very dark and Autumn Olive is light yellow. Another thought, were you feeding sugar water? This would give you a clear honey.
Our locust honey is pretty clear color wise and I often get asked what we add/mix with our
honey and proudly say nothing that is the color of our spring honey!
Also fireweed and snowberry can be fairly light in color.
Early in this thread I asked the op if he/she meant clear in color or lacking in particulates. I never got a reply.....so, to my thinking we don't really have any idea what we're talking about.
Yes, honey can be clear.
It can have color and be transparent, and it also can be colorless ( or very nearly so) and be transparent...similar to light Karo syrup.
Since we don't know what we are talking about I will chime in One and only one time in all my time with bees did I get a shallow super of black locust honey which extracted made one gallon. I put it in a one gallon jar and it was so light you could easily read a newspaper thru it. Extracted sugar syrup looks the same but to me the taste difference is obvious.
In November we had a statewide Natural Honey Challenge. Here are a couple of photos I snapped during the sorting of the honey. We had a couple of "water white" entries according to Jack's Scale, and you can see that they are very clear.
The rule was no heating or forced filtration, honey could be strained only.
There is also a photo of the darkest and lightest of the honeys.
One of the very clear honeys was identified by the beekeeper as "palm"; the others were not identified as to type and so classified as mixed floral for the competition.
The very dark honey pictured was identified by the beekeeper as macadamia nut.
Pure 'Sourwood Honey' is nearly as clear as water, and has a light smell of lilacs. It also has a very distinct wonderful taste, that you will never forget!
Our sourwood was extra-light to light amber color and extremely aromatic. We used to make a lot before they cut it all down in our area and planted pine trees. Pure sourwood is very very slow to granualte and some never does.
For me it seems that some batch's are clear, meaning very little suspended matter, and sometimes it is cloudy. I use the same technique every the time. I don't mind either way as long as the customer is happy!
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