Dancing Bee Gardens - Honey -
Caring for bees organically: producing raw honey without dangerous synthetic chemicals & antibiotics.
Raw Honey
Dancing Bee Gardens honey is always guaranteed to be unfiltered and not heated in any way. The hardworking honey bees that gather the nectar to produce Dancing Bee Honey are not exposed to toxic synthetic chemicals and antibiotics to control parasitic mites and diseases. The use of nontoxic organic methods helps to ensure the purity and superior quality of the honey harvested. This special care makes Dancing Bee honey ideal for use as both a food and for apitherapy.
From the heart of nature to you...Enjoy!
A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words
Click Here for a short video on the bees and the journey on
Chelsea Green TV. (Search under Gardening & Agriculture)
Dancing Bee Gardens honey is always guaranteed to be unfiltered and not heated in any way. The hardworking honey bees that gather the nectar to produce Dancing Bee Honey are not exposed to toxic synthetic chemicals and antibiotics to control parasitic mites and diseases. The use of nontoxic organic methods helps to ensure the purity and superior quality of the honey harvested. This special care makes Dancing Bee honey ideal for use as both a food and for apitherapy.
From the heart of nature to you...Enjoy!
A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words
Click Here for a short video on the bees and the journey on
Chelsea Green TV. (Search under Gardening & Agriculture)
The Properties Of Honey
When gathered by the bees and brought into the hive, the nectar from the blossoms of flowering plants contains about 60% water. After mixing the nectar with enzymes, the bees will evaporate off much of the water by moving the air within the hive around with their wings until the moisture content falls to about 18 percent or less. This is the point at which honey is considered to be ripe.
Ripe honey is hygroscopic in nature. This means that it has the tendency to draw moisture to itself. If honey is left exposed to the air, it will absorb the moisture in the air that exists in the form of humidity. If the water concentration increases to the point where it is above the 18 percent range, yeast (that is found naturally in the environment) will be able to multiply in the honey. A by-product of the yeast growth is alcohol as the honey ferments. If the correct yeast is present (and naturally occurring yeast is not typically such), a drink known as mead is produced. When the moisture content of the honey is allowed to increase to between 18 and 19 percent or higher, naturally occurring yeast will cause the honey to ferment and develop a somewhat unpalatable taste that is sour...though it still can be eaten or used in baking or mead making.
Because honey is hygroscopic, it is often used to extend the shelf-life of baked goods. Cookies, cakes and pastries are less likely to dry out because the honey in them absorbs moisture from the surrounding air. If you want to experiment, bake a batch of cookies using sugar. Then make a second batch and replace half of the sugar with honey. When doing this you need to reduce the liquids in the recipe by 1/4 cup for each cup of honey (because of the moisture content of the honey...remember, about 18 percent or so) and reduce the cooking temperature by about 25 degrees. See which batch lasts longer before going stale.
Honey Storage
The bees prevent the fermentation of honey by sealing fully ripened honey in the honey comb with a thin layer of beeswax. When honey is harvested, we can leave it in the comb or extract it from the comb and seal it in jars. At a moisture level of 18 percent or below, and with a pH of 3-4, the honey is very stable and can last literally for centuries. (Honey was found in Egyptian tombs still in eatable condition) As long as it is protected from moisture, nothing harmful to humans (e.g. mold or bacteria) can grow in honey. Fully ripened honey may become hard and lumpy, but it will never become moldy or rancid. While stored honey will naturally darken over time, this does not adversely effect its ability to be eaten and enjoyed.
When first extracted from the hive, honey is typically in its liquid form. Over time most kinds of honey will naturally start to crystallize and become opaque. The crystallization process is a natural one and does not spoil the honey in any way other than to make it less runny by giving the honey the consistency of butter. To extend the shelf life of honey in its liquid form, most honey processors will heat crystallized honey to melt the sugar crystals and reliquify the honey. Unfortunately this cooking process destroys the enzymes found in raw honey and ruins the delicate flavor of the honey. When in its liquid form, honey is translucent. This allows the small bits and pieces of pollen, beeswax and propolis that enter the honey during the extraction process to become visible. Since most folks don't want things floating around in their honey, the pollen, beeswax and propolis are filtered out, seriously degrading the nutritional quality of the honey that remains.
Honey does not need to be refrigerated. Cool temperatures will simply make crystallized honey harder. When stored in a warm environment, honey will soften. If kept for extended periods in temperatures between 85-95 degrees Fahrenheit or more, honey will tend to liquefy as the sugar crystals slowly melt. Liquid or comb honey can be kept frozen, which will retard the crystallization process. Unfortunately, once thawed out, the liquid honey will tend to crystallize faster than it would normally.
Healing With Raw Honey
Honey has a long history of medicinal use dating back thousands of years. While the health and healing properties of honey are wide and varied, it is raw honey's antibacterial and antifungal properties that make it ideal for use on wounds, burns and infections. With its low pH and high sugar content, honey inhibits the growth of pathogens in much the same way that sugar is used to preserve jams and jellies. The hygroscopic nature of honey allow it to draw the moisture out of any bacteria or mold that are unfortunate enough to find themselves in contact with it. In this way, the bacteria found in infectious wounds are dehydrated and killed off by the application of honey. As if that was not enough, honey contains the enzyme glucose oxidase that upon contact with the skin, breaks down and slowly releases hydrogen peroxide in the process. Thus, honey provides a degree of antiseptic action that is unparalleled in the world of medicine.
When it comes to burns, raw honey is miles ahead of other treatments. In less than a minute after application, a honey poultice will stop the pain associated with even nasty burns by sealing off the wound from the air. In addition to the antibacterial action described above that prevents infection, honey keeps the burn site moist so that the typical pain associated with the changing of burn wound dressings is significantly diminished. Additionally, the typical discoloration and scarring associated with burns is greatly reduced and in many cases eliminated completely. Now if the pharmaceutical industry could manage to manufacture a treatment with the above attributes, the FDA and AMA would mandate that it be used as the primary treatment for all burn victims throughout the United States. So why do we not hear more about the miraculous effects of raw honey on wounds, burns or infections? It is because honey is a natural product, like herbs and food supplements, and as such it is unpatentable and therefore its manufacture and distribution can not be controlled and monopolized. Our capitalistic system holds so much promise, and yet contains a fatal flaw...it only produces and encourages that which makes the most profit, not what is necessarily best for society.
The Dancing Bee Philosophy
We believe in managing our hives in a manner that places the interests of the bees ahead of the personal interests of the beekeeper. This means that here, in the Champlain Valley of Vermont, we often give up a significant part of the honey harvest to be sure the hives have plenty of honey to get them through the long winter months. By conducting our annual harvest earlier in the year than most beekeepers in this neck of the woods, we not only ensure that all the Autumn honey the bees collect goes toward their winter provisions, but that there is plenty of time to provide necessary treatments for mites and diseases ensuring that the bees in our care are strong and vibrantly healthy as they head into the long winter months. In order to make it through the winter without starving, bees in Vermont typically require a minimum of 60-80 pounds of honey depending on the colony age and size. We only feed our bees sugar syrup as a last resort, in emergency situations, believing that bees are meant to eat honey made from the nectar of flowers and that regularly feeding them artificial diets that are devoid of the necessary nutrients and enzymes they require will not allow the bees to thrive.
When gathered by the bees and brought into the hive, the nectar from the blossoms of flowering plants contains about 60% water. After mixing the nectar with enzymes, the bees will evaporate off much of the water by moving the air within the hive around with their wings until the moisture content falls to about 18 percent or less. This is the point at which honey is considered to be ripe.
Ripe honey is hygroscopic in nature. This means that it has the tendency to draw moisture to itself. If honey is left exposed to the air, it will absorb the moisture in the air that exists in the form of humidity. If the water concentration increases to the point where it is above the 18 percent range, yeast (that is found naturally in the environment) will be able to multiply in the honey. A by-product of the yeast growth is alcohol as the honey ferments. If the correct yeast is present (and naturally occurring yeast is not typically such), a drink known as mead is produced. When the moisture content of the honey is allowed to increase to between 18 and 19 percent or higher, naturally occurring yeast will cause the honey to ferment and develop a somewhat unpalatable taste that is sour...though it still can be eaten or used in baking or mead making.
Because honey is hygroscopic, it is often used to extend the shelf-life of baked goods. Cookies, cakes and pastries are less likely to dry out because the honey in them absorbs moisture from the surrounding air. If you want to experiment, bake a batch of cookies using sugar. Then make a second batch and replace half of the sugar with honey. When doing this you need to reduce the liquids in the recipe by 1/4 cup for each cup of honey (because of the moisture content of the honey...remember, about 18 percent or so) and reduce the cooking temperature by about 25 degrees. See which batch lasts longer before going stale.
Honey Storage
The bees prevent the fermentation of honey by sealing fully ripened honey in the honey comb with a thin layer of beeswax. When honey is harvested, we can leave it in the comb or extract it from the comb and seal it in jars. At a moisture level of 18 percent or below, and with a pH of 3-4, the honey is very stable and can last literally for centuries. (Honey was found in Egyptian tombs still in eatable condition) As long as it is protected from moisture, nothing harmful to humans (e.g. mold or bacteria) can grow in honey. Fully ripened honey may become hard and lumpy, but it will never become moldy or rancid. While stored honey will naturally darken over time, this does not adversely effect its ability to be eaten and enjoyed.
When first extracted from the hive, honey is typically in its liquid form. Over time most kinds of honey will naturally start to crystallize and become opaque. The crystallization process is a natural one and does not spoil the honey in any way other than to make it less runny by giving the honey the consistency of butter. To extend the shelf life of honey in its liquid form, most honey processors will heat crystallized honey to melt the sugar crystals and reliquify the honey. Unfortunately this cooking process destroys the enzymes found in raw honey and ruins the delicate flavor of the honey. When in its liquid form, honey is translucent. This allows the small bits and pieces of pollen, beeswax and propolis that enter the honey during the extraction process to become visible. Since most folks don't want things floating around in their honey, the pollen, beeswax and propolis are filtered out, seriously degrading the nutritional quality of the honey that remains.
Honey does not need to be refrigerated. Cool temperatures will simply make crystallized honey harder. When stored in a warm environment, honey will soften. If kept for extended periods in temperatures between 85-95 degrees Fahrenheit or more, honey will tend to liquefy as the sugar crystals slowly melt. Liquid or comb honey can be kept frozen, which will retard the crystallization process. Unfortunately, once thawed out, the liquid honey will tend to crystallize faster than it would normally.
Healing With Raw Honey
Honey has a long history of medicinal use dating back thousands of years. While the health and healing properties of honey are wide and varied, it is raw honey's antibacterial and antifungal properties that make it ideal for use on wounds, burns and infections. With its low pH and high sugar content, honey inhibits the growth of pathogens in much the same way that sugar is used to preserve jams and jellies. The hygroscopic nature of honey allow it to draw the moisture out of any bacteria or mold that are unfortunate enough to find themselves in contact with it. In this way, the bacteria found in infectious wounds are dehydrated and killed off by the application of honey. As if that was not enough, honey contains the enzyme glucose oxidase that upon contact with the skin, breaks down and slowly releases hydrogen peroxide in the process. Thus, honey provides a degree of antiseptic action that is unparalleled in the world of medicine.
When it comes to burns, raw honey is miles ahead of other treatments. In less than a minute after application, a honey poultice will stop the pain associated with even nasty burns by sealing off the wound from the air. In addition to the antibacterial action described above that prevents infection, honey keeps the burn site moist so that the typical pain associated with the changing of burn wound dressings is significantly diminished. Additionally, the typical discoloration and scarring associated with burns is greatly reduced and in many cases eliminated completely. Now if the pharmaceutical industry could manage to manufacture a treatment with the above attributes, the FDA and AMA would mandate that it be used as the primary treatment for all burn victims throughout the United States. So why do we not hear more about the miraculous effects of raw honey on wounds, burns or infections? It is because honey is a natural product, like herbs and food supplements, and as such it is unpatentable and therefore its manufacture and distribution can not be controlled and monopolized. Our capitalistic system holds so much promise, and yet contains a fatal flaw...it only produces and encourages that which makes the most profit, not what is necessarily best for society.
The Dancing Bee Philosophy
We believe in managing our hives in a manner that places the interests of the bees ahead of the personal interests of the beekeeper. This means that here, in the Champlain Valley of Vermont, we often give up a significant part of the honey harvest to be sure the hives have plenty of honey to get them through the long winter months. By conducting our annual harvest earlier in the year than most beekeepers in this neck of the woods, we not only ensure that all the Autumn honey the bees collect goes toward their winter provisions, but that there is plenty of time to provide necessary treatments for mites and diseases ensuring that the bees in our care are strong and vibrantly healthy as they head into the long winter months. In order to make it through the winter without starving, bees in Vermont typically require a minimum of 60-80 pounds of honey depending on the colony age and size. We only feed our bees sugar syrup as a last resort, in emergency situations, believing that bees are meant to eat honey made from the nectar of flowers and that regularly feeding them artificial diets that are devoid of the necessary nutrients and enzymes they require will not allow the bees to thrive.
