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You buy honey in the market, fair or hand-to-hand

1. The price must be by all means lower than in the shop. All assurances that this honey is elite, wild, from the mountains, etc are deceitful. The expenses  of such sales are much lower, than in trade. The honey is the same, the price is high – you are being befooled.

2.  Weighing sale is absolutely prohibited by all supervisory authorities and services. Honey should undergo a test in the market laboratory, also packaged and labeled there. The trick is as follows: there is labeled honey on the counter, and you are suggested to buy “the same” unlabeled under-the-counter. It’s a lie.

3. They give you a sample to taste and offer to buy honey in a jar saying that it is the same. Open the jar and taste honey. If a seller raises no objection – you should taste it anyway.

4. If a seller says that he is a beekeeper.

Ask him to show you his passport and the one of the beegarden.
- The surname coincides;
- The registration and the region of beegarden passport also coincide;
- The older the passport the better it is
- The passport should contain the  mark about an annual check of the beegarden by the Veterinary Corps affixed with the seal.

If you see this beekeeper the year round ask a question when he is  occupied with bees. Since the end of April till the end of

October beekeepers have no time at all. Do not buy honey in the streets or when someone brings it to your home.

Properties of nature honey

Thank to peculiar geographical position the Altai land created remarkable conditions for beekeeping. Genial climate, the absence of mineral recourses, agriculture only. We still have regions without electricity, in mountain areas the way of life keeps up for decades. The diastasis number of some kinds of the Altai honey exceeds 50 points, the average performance of the same all over Russia is 10-15.

Honey crystallizes in natural conditions. Honey becomes cloudy (photo 1) or there appear some flocks on the bottom of the tare which in course of time fill the whole space (photo 2),  further honey gradually crystallizes up to the thick mass. Honey storage temperature should not exceed 20 C – naturally it is not kept in the refrigerators, the average home temperature, especially in the kitchen exceeds 20 C. The higher the storage temperature is the longer honey is not crystallized and the faster there appears a transparent membrane (more often of dark color) on the surface of the already crystallized honey (photo 3).

The more fructose content is the more volume of transparent honey there will be. These processes are also influenced by the honey plant from which the honeydew was taken.  Let’s take for example buckwheat. The honey from pure buckwheat is black, does not crystallize for a long time and at the temperature of 15 C the process of decrystallizing takes place, and the transparent content can reach 50-75 % of the whole volume. The honey plants also influence the structure of the crystallized honey. There is greasy honey (also called caramelly honey) – one does not feel crystals in such honey when taste, further goes small- and large-grained honey. The process of stratification is naturally faster by large-grained honey (photo 4).

The temperature of crystallization of fructose and glucose is different and fructose transfers from crystal into liquid. The stratified honey before eating should be shuffled – according to the beekeeping literature honey can be kept up to 6 years without changing properties. Storage temperature is 5 C.

The time of stratification formation is also influenced by the moisture content. If the moisture content is up to 16% then such honey is called dry – it stratifies very seldom what is characteristic of white, light honey. If the moisture content is higher than 20% (GOST admits 21%) at storage temperature above 20 C it can not only stratify but also ferment. The combination of all factors give the necessary effect.

There can be white spots in honey – it is crystallized glucose. It spreads over the whole mass if honey (photo 5) If honey crystallizes slowly then glucose flocks on the surface of honey as froth (photo 6).

All these are natural normal processes characteristic of natural honey. This is especially characteristic for honey that was not subjected to any exposure such as heating and blending (mixture of different sorts of honey).

There is one more peculiarity of natural honey. The higher the  diastasis number  is the harsher and more bitter the honey is.
The Emperor Nikolai II planted buckwheat on his apiary. The pure buckwheat honey (Altai in particularly) has the diastasis number more than 50. It is bitter and harsh. As far as the iron-content is concerned – it has no analogy, contains no complex sugars, but the appearance is unpresentable.     It is an irreplaceable food-stuff for diabetics  and people suffering from anemia. Nowadays when it is very difficult to find a non-adulterate  medicine honey – as a therapeutic agent takes a top-place.  To summer it all up – it is very difficult to work with the natural product but we want to preserve bee labour.

We pack honey without processing it directly from the churns in which the beekeeper pumped honey in the consumer container. The customer has on table exactly what the bee community has gathered.