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Looking to buy treatment free honey

22K views 55 replies 19 participants last post by  tMcf 
#1 ·
Do you produce more treatment free honey than you can sell? If so, we are looking to buy barrels. Please send a message if you are interested in selling?
 
#2 ·
just would like to fill you in that what you are doing is bad for beekeepers in general. I looked over your web site, i noticed a lot of things that are unsettling

from your web site:
"Our honey is completely free from the dangerous chemical and antibiotic residues used by most beekeepers today"

all beekeepers i know sell honey without antibiotics or chemicals in it. your not the only one
go to the whole foods co-op and buy every honey on the shelf and have them all tested for any antibiotics or chemicals and you will find that there will be none.

with that being said what makes you think you can lie to people and say what you are saying?
let your honey sell itself with out lying and bad mouthing other beekeepers

your asking to buy barrels of honey that you didn't produce, remember.
"treatment free honey"
if it werent for treatments you wouldn't have your package bee's.

ya know there are things like formic acid and thymol that are used to treat bee's.
those are not chemicals or antibiotics, but they are a treatment.
 
#3 ·
Benstung,
Most beekeepers use chemicals and antibiotics to treat their hives.

You yourself say that every honey on the shelf is free of those pesticides.

So if someone say their honey is free of dangerous chemicals and antibiotics used by most beekeepers, what they are saying is true, isn't it?

Where is the lie here?
I see no untrue statement.
 
#9 ·
I would bet they are more likely the any number of chemicals not put in beehives by beekeepers.

Notice the OP want Treatment Free Honey, not chemical free or pesticide free honey.

Pesticide residue is brought into the hive by bees. If the buyer wants chemical free honey they will have to go to thge ends of the Earth to find it. And, maybe, that won't be far enough.
 
#10 ·
Implied in BareHoney's query for treatment free honey is the assumption that any sort of treatment to a bee hive at any time of the year results in a less than pure product. This is a myth. Mite treatments such as Hopguard, thymol, Formic or oxalic acid placed on hives this time of year after all extracting comb has been removed will not show up in next years crop with even the most sensitive testing. Any antibiotic use such as tetracycline should only be applied as a powder in the late summer or very early spring. Tylosin if used at all is best used in the fall and also should not be added to syrup. I have only experimented with Fumidil a few times and have never had a positive reading in any honey I have ever had tested so I can't speak with much certainty about that but, as is the case with many of these other treatments it is best used in the fall.
I am not about to say that all honey you see on the shelf is going to test completely clean of some residues. I suspect there is some misuse out there and some honey packers that may be less than diligent in their testing. What I am saying, though, is that responsible use of treatments will result in a product that tests every bit as clean as anything that comes from a treatment free hive.
 
#11 ·
"What I am saying, though, is that responsible use of treatments will result in a product that tests every bit as clean as anything that comes from a treatment free hive."

I dont disagree with you, but now you've got me wondering what the advantages of treatment free beekeeping are.
 
#14 ·
Well, I wondered why it wasn't in the Wanting to Buy Forum to begin with. But maybe Treatment Free folks wouldn't see it there.

Solomon,
Folks sell honey by the pound, not the quart. Fiftyfive gallon drum contains around 660 lbs of honey times $3.00/lb equals $1980.00. $5.00/lb would come out to $3900.00. Even better.

But why stop there? $10.00/lb would come to $6600.00/barrel.

Where did you get you $15.00 per quart? Did BareHoney mention a price somewhere?
 
#16 ·
If they can get it I am all for them doing so. I will gladly sell them honey at one quarter that price so they can make some profit. But I don't know if I have what they want.

benstung, I don't know where you got that price from. I went to their site and most of what I saw was around $8.00 to $10.00 per lb.

Nice looking site, nice looking product line. I would love to sell them honey.
 
#18 ·
You label it that way and get away w/ it? Ain't no finagling about it. Honey has traditionally been sold by the lb for ages and ages. But, whatever works for ya.

You really get $60.00 per gallon? That comes out to $5.00 per lb. The economy must be better than it is here. I wholesale half gallon/6 lb "Jug-o-Honey"(TM) for $18.00 each, which is $3.00/lb. Maybe I should move to Arkansas.
 
#23 · (Edited)
I do not know, but I assume that BareHoney people who wants to sell "treatment-free honey" should have some mechanism to prove that this IS "treatment-free" honey... ask them.
It should not be really difficult if they would use the analogy with FDA definition of "organic" - it is simply something, which grows on the land, which did not see chemicals for 10 consecutive years (or 15, I forgot). As far as I know, FDA actually do not check quality of "organic" product - they assume that it is good if grows on "treatment-free" land. Similar rules may be established for honey. For instance, if beekeeper could prove that the hives did not see any chemicals for let say 5 years and comb was not rotated (accumulation of pesticides), than it may be considered "treatment-free". Sergey
 
#30 ·
My suggestion to Barehoney if he truly wants to sell an absolutely pure product is to decide what chemicals he wants to test for and have any producers he wishes to purchase honey from share the testing cost. A clean pure product is an admirable goal and one that should bring a premium price. Forget all these attempts at trying to define what is and what is not treatment free, let the lab decide. Expensive? Perhaps yes at this scale but it's a cost ultimately borne by the consumer who is demanding it. Want a sample? PM me and I will gladly send one your way.
 
#31 · (Edited)
Yes, I believe you are correct. FDA doesn't require analysis of what is produced, they set standars, I believe. Standards of what qualifys as organic.

No nutritional difference. I said nothing about all the other things you mentioned.

I heard this reported on National Public Radio sometime in the last week, could have been Saturday morning. I really am sorry about not having a link. It would better illustrate what I am saying. Maybe someone better at computer manipulations than I am could find the article.

Okay, here's what you do. Search npr and look for the article "Why Organic Food May Not Be Healthier For You" by Allison Aubrey and Dan Charles.

Back to my statement about getting people to believe something instead of proving something, that's what Organics have done. People assume that organic this or that is better for you when it might not be any more nutritious.

Just like people think that Local is better. But is it necassarily so. It isn't even necassarily more beneficial to the environment.
 
#33 · (Edited)
Maybe someone better at computer manipulations than I am could find the article.

Okay, here's what you do. Search npr and look for the article "Why Organic Food May Not Be Healthier For You" by Allison Aubrey and Dan Charles.
Mark, this is your link:
http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=160395259&m=160526718

I have a mixed feeling about this report. From one hand, I already expressed my scepticizm regarding "organic" anything (see above). From another hand the way how scientific data was interpreted is controversial for couple of reasons:
- all good nutrients in organic or non-organic food should be the same - it is obvious - organic carrot contains exactly the same carotene as non-organic. Thus, "nutrient value" must be the same, no surprise here.
- standard "nutrient" tests cover only very small portion of what is in the food. For instance, they measure amount of carbohydrates - sure, it would be very similar in organic and non-organic. Non-organic could be even more sweet!
- BUT: there are million other elements in the food, which may be beneficial to us or not, which were not measured for some reason. This is what makes a difference between my tomato from my garden and ANY other tomatoes! This part was completely missed in the study and authors confirm that.
Simple example: technically, the major composition of honey is very similar to high-fructose corn syrup. So, following the logic of the study, there is no nutritional difference between these two. But we all know that honey is way different from the corn syrup, right? So, unfortunately, I have to admit that even Standford sometime produces very shallow science - they checked only big things and ignored small things, which actually do a difference.

The problem is that FDA set very "wide" limits and if you are within these limits - everything is the same. I would not be surprised if they measure the nutritional value of toilet paper and will find that it is withing the limits, AND very dietic - zero calories and a lot of beneficial fibers - go ahead, eat toilet paper instead cucumber (cucumber is just water and fibers).

If somebody interested, there is more balanced presentation of the story:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/10/stanford-organic-study-author-limitations_n_1870952.html

Keep in mind, that they are talking only about "nutrition value", which is the same as expected. The presence of antibiotics and pesticides and other stuff was not included in their conclusion. They also did not perform their own research - they just use published data... Totally useless work. I am shocked by such low quality of research under Stanford name.
Sergey
 
#35 ·
I had a chance to visit apiaries in Oaxaca Mexico’s diverse regions.
Some are situated where there is no agriculture or any other kind of intensive human intervention. The farming is mostly primitive and gathering of products from the jungles are a food resort for the beekeepers. These places are remote and hard to get to, some are rain forests, jungles, mountains where lots of Europeans and Americans seek mushrooms, and where the beekeepers produce a little- maybe for lack of marketing or interest on their products, or maybe, because they had found a way to deal with adjusting with what they have . There is no intensive farming, or massive beekeeping; most hives are Africanized and treatment free. When a hive is infested, they just let it die for treating hives is expensive and rebuilding from the survivors is what they do. I do not think they do it to keep the survivors but because getting medications or forms to diagnose is just out of reach. I am not saying this is right or wrong, but that’s what it is. I may be moving to the city of Oaxaca with the intention of building an orphanage there but, I also may be forming some kind of a co-op to help this primitive farmers a chance to market their wonderful products. I have asked different governments agencies to allow me to build the orphanage and allow me to help the beekeepers by helping them expose their products outside their limited boundaries. The respond has been positive but painfully slow. Some – just a few- of this honeys already reach the European markets, my understanding is that some were certified by the European Union and Mexico as organic, and those go mostly to Germany. The goal is to expose the growers and their products, with their own labels and short stories as a way to help them earn their way out of poverty.
So, I do believe that there are honeys that can and are produced free of pesticides, treatments or contaminants.
Aurelio Paez
 
#36 · (Edited)
Organic is just a marketing term used to keep the wool over our eyes a bit longer, it satisfies a population who is tired of being poisoned to death, and wants an alternative. Yes, they do require you meet certain conditions to be able to label your product as organic, but in the end its just another joke. Oh yes, and the free trade products that you see on the grocery shelves that cost twice what a regular product does, including honey, that's another joke that the large corporations are pulling on us. John
 
#37 ·
Organic is just a marketing term John
I would disagree on one point; Comb honey made with foundation has a thick center wall with thin sidewalls. "Natural Comb Honey" has all thin cell walls. The center wall is the same thickness as the sides. There is a difference when the two are compared one bite from each. The thin-walled comb has a more delicate taste.

Rather than telling people my honey is organic, I just state that the bees made the comb naturally and that I have put no chemicals in the hive.
 
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