Mohawk Valley Trading Company

Honey

Honey, Raw Honey, Comb Honey

Product of the USA

The Mohawk Valley Trading Company specializes in raw varietal honey which is made primarily from the nectar of a particular type of blossom or flower. To capture the unique character and flavor of the blossom or flower, beekeepers must study botanical bloom and flowering patterns when planning hive placement.

Our raw honey is unheated, unpasteurized, unfiltered, unprocessed, unblended and all of the pollen, enzymes, propolis, vitamins, minerals, amino acids, antioxidants and aromatics are in the same condition as they were in the hive.

No pesticides or herbicides are used in our apiaries and although we do not call it organic, our honey is about as organic as you can get from The United States: Read more here.

Liquid Honey - 1lb Glass Jar...$10.00

If you are buying honey for its health-benefits, it must be raw honey. Heating honey (pasteurization) destroys the all of the pollen, enzymes, propolis, vitamins, amino acids, antioxidants and aromatics.

Honey that has been heated and filtered is called commercial, regular or liquid honey.

Although we specialize in raw honey, we also offer liquid honey.

"But if raw honey is so good for you, and heating it kills all the good stuff, why heat it?"

The reason some honey is heated is that the majority of Americans prefer the convenience of being able to spoon, pour or squeeze honey from a bottle onto their cereal or into their tea.

In addition, commercial honey is clearer, easier to measure or spread than raw honey and many people think that honey that has crystallized is spoiled so they discard it. Honey that has been heated and filtered will not crystallize as fast as raw honey.

Therefore we also offer regular honey for those who prefer it.

Our honey is Kosher since it is 100% pure honey with no additives or dilutions.

If you have any questions regarding the purity of our honey, here is a link provided by the National Honey Board to a database of Analytical Laboratories that Test Honey which will test honey for purity or economic adulteration. This list does not constitute an endorsement, recommendation or guarantee, nor is it all-inclusive.

The Mohawk Valley Trading Company warehouse is located in the city of Utica and is neither a walk-in retail store nor open to the public; we sell on line only and honey is NOT returnable.

Our Honey Origins

Buckwheat Honey - From about July through thru October, we place hives in buckwheat fields on both slopes and the surrounding area of the Central Mohawk Valley and Finger Lakes region of New York.

Orange Blossom Honey - From about the last week of October (after we harvest the Autumn Wildflower and Buckwheat Honey) thru April, some of our bees are trucked to Florida (the orange blossom is the state flower) where we set up apiaries in orange groves. Our Orange Blossom Honey is derived mainly from the nectar of Ambersweet, Hamlin, Navel, Red Navel, Parson Brown, Pineapple, Temple and Valencia orange blossoms. It is this wide variety of orange blossoms that gives our Orange Blossom Honey its unique and extraordinary flavor.

Tulip Poplar-Black Locust Honey - From about the last week of October (after we harvest the Autumn Wildflower and Buckwheat Honey) thru April some of our hives are trucked to The Delmarva Peninsula to winter over in a milder climate and to get an earlier start in the spring than they would in Upstate NY. Tulip Poplar and Black Locust trees bloom about the same time and this honey is derived form the nectar of their blossoms. Its dark color is due to the high mineral content.

Apple Blossom Honey - From about the beginning of April thru May, we set up apiaries in apple orchards on both slopes and the surrounding area of the Southern Kuyahoora (West Canada) Valley & Central Mohawk Valley regions of Upstate New York. One of them in particular is a little known boutique apple orchard where the owner, in addition to growing a wide variety of officially recognized apples, has developed a few species of apples that exist nowhere else, except in his orchard.

Our Apple Blossom Honey is derived primarily from the nectar of Fuji, Wolf River, Crispen, Sweet Sixteen, Pound Sweet, Granny Smith, Winesap, Fortune, Cortland, Empire, Ginger Gold, Macoun, Spigold, Honeycrisp, Jonagold, Golden Delicious, Acey Mac, and other apple blossoms. It is this wide variety of apple blossoms that gives our Apple Blossom Honey its unique and extraordinary flavor.

Blueberry Blossom Honey - From about the beginning of May thru June, some of our hives are trucked to Maine to pollinate wild blueberries which are one of the few fruit-bearing plants native to North America and Maine is the largest producer of blueberries on the continent.

Wildflower Honey - Also known as polyfloral honey, it is derived from the nectar of numerous species of flowers or blossoms. The taste, aroma and flavor will vary from season to season, depending on which flowers are dominant at the time the nectar is collected.

Summer Wildflower Honey – From April thru mid-late August, hives are on both slopes and the surrounding area of the Southern Kuyahoora Valley & Central Mohawk Valley regions of Upstate New York.

Autumn Wildflower Honey - From late August thru October, hives are on both slopes and the surrounding area of the Southern Kuyahoora Valley & Central Mohawk Valley regions of Upstate New York.

Goldenrod Honey- From mid-late August through October, hives are on both slopes and the surrounding area of the Southern Kuyahoora Valley & Central Mohawk Valley regions of Upstate New York.

Adirondack Summer and Autumn Wildflower Honey - From April thru September-October, we place hives within the Blue Line of the Adirondack Park, New York.

Raw Honey - 1lb Glass Jar...$10.00

What is Honey?

Honey is a viscid, edible and sweet substance made from flower nectar that has been collected by bees. It is produced by a wide variety of bees and insects, though each has distinctly different properties. The type consumed by humans is that which is made by honey bees (the genus Apis - hence the terms apiary, apiarist, apiculture, etc.).

Honey bees create honey by collecting nectar from flowers and regurgitating it to store in wax honeycombs inside their hive. Honey’s sweetness is remarkably comparable to that of granulated sugar and is thus used as a substitution for sugar by many people. Honey gets its sweetness from monosaccharides, fructose, and glucose.

People have delighted in the discovery of honey due to it’s characteristic flavor and ideal chemical properties suitable for baking and in many cases is more preferable than sugar. Most people use honey in cooking, baking, as a topping on various foods, as a sweetener to beverages, and it’s the main ingredient in mead.

How Bees Make Honey

Inside the hive, the hierarchy is broken down into three classes; one queen bee, a varying number of male drones, and approximately 20,000-40,000 female worker bees. Each has a specific role in the hive: The queen is meant to reproduce, the drones are meant to fertilize the queens, and the worker bees collect nectar, raise larvae, and make honey.

As a group, honeybees make honey through repeatedly regurgitating nectar until it is partially digested. They work together until the honey reaches a desired state and then store the solution in the honeycomb. This process adds enzymes to the solution and changes it’s chemical composition which helps prevent fermentation. However, fermentation is still possible in this stage due to the high moisture content. To significantly reduce the amount of water in the honey, the bees leave the honey unsealed in the honeycomb and the excess water is evaporated by the fanning of the bees’ wings inside the hive.

Bees make honey as a food source for during cold weather, and when food sources are scarce. People have been able to semi-domesticate honey bees by persuading the insects to nest in manmade hives. Once honey ripens, it is removed by the beekeeper and lasts a long time without fermenting.

Beekeeping and Collecting Honey

There are two types of bee hives that honey is collected from by humans; Wild bee colonies and domesticated beehives. In wild colonies, some times the bees are located using a honeyguide bird. Honeyguide birds are a fascinating species that will interact with humans by intentionally leading them to colonies of bees so that they can feed on the wax and bee larvae left behind after humans harvest honey from the hive. This collaboration has been developed over many centuries and was more essential in ancient times before bees were able to be domesticated.

Domesticated beehives function much differently and have a variety of uses aside from simply producing honey. They are used to collect beeswax, propolis, pollen, royal jelly, to pollinate crops, and to produce more bees to sell to other beekeepers. Beekeepers encourage overproduction of honey so that there is plenty to be harvested for humans as well as for the bees’ consumption. Activists believe the bees are being used like slaves and that they are being killed by overworking them, which makes domesticated beehives that promote overproduction of honey a controversial method. They also argue that bees kept to fertilize a specific floral variety lack adequate nutritional diversity which may also be causing the mass diminution of bee colonies.

The collection of honey in domesticated hives is typically done using smoke to simulate a forest fire which causes the bees to become more docile as they attempt to save the honey. When harvesting the honey it makes economical sense to not damage the honeycombs due to the fact that bees need to eat over 8 lbs of honey just to secrete 1 lb. of wax. The honeycombs’ purpose is to store honey, pollen, eggs, and larvae. Protecting the structural integrity of the honeycomb, the development and use of honey extractors - often in the form of a centrifuge of sorts - removes the honey while leaving the honeycomb mostly intact. After the honey is collected, it is then filtered and in some cases processed.

Types of Honey

Honey can be classified by it’s floral source, the way it’s packaged, and the processing used. Starting with the floral source, honey bees collect honey from flowers and if you’ve ever smelled any two types of flowers you know they have different scents. It makes sense that their nectars would have different flavors, right? The types of flowers the honeybees collect the nectar from has a huge impact on the honey’s flavor. Some beekeepers will set the hives up near fields of specific flowers in order to get the bees to collect only that nectar thus creating a specific flavor. For example, they might set them in an orange grove to get orange blossom honey.

Many locations don’t have plant life that is constantly blooming so it is common practice for beekeepers to keep their bees, for example, in the northern states to collect wildflower and blueberry blossom honey in the spring and summer months, then ship them down to Florida to collect orange blossom honey during the winter. This is beneficial not only for humans because we get our uniquely specific honey flavors, but the bees gain nutritional value from being able to consume a variety of nectars.

There are many different types of honey, though blended honey is the most common type of honey available. It’s simply a blend of honey taken from several sources.
Wildflower honey is honey that is made from the nectar of a variety of flowers. This type of honey may vary in flavor from year to year due to the fluctuation in the available flowers in bloom.

Monofloral honey has a primary nectar source in the form of a specific flower such as apple blossoms. It’s impossible to know where the bees are at all times so there will be trace amounts of other nectars, but the overwhelming amount of the principal nectar source dictates the flavor and aroma.

Honeydew honey is locally popular in places like Germany, Bulgaria, Serbia and Northern California, but on the wider view compared to the more popular varieties of honey, it is hard to sell due to it’s robust flavor that most people aren’t used to. It is derived from the sweet secretions of sap-sucking insects such as aphids. The production of this type of honey adds a necessary step for beekeepers to take in order to preserve the health of the colony - the bees need to be fed protein supplements due to the lack of sufficient quantities of protein that they would normally get from pollen.

Packaged Varieties of Honey

Honey is packaged in various states from the most familiar liquid form to the less common comb variety. There is crystallized honey (often the liquid honey you buy becomes crystallized and simply needs to be reheated to return it to it’s liquid state), pasteurized honey (which kills yeast, bacteria, affects color, flavor and delays crystallization), raw honey (is as it is when it is first extracted from the hive - minimal to no processing, and all the original pollen, wax particles, propolis, and live enzymes are intact), strained honey (is passed through mesh to remove particulates, leaving minerals, enzymes and pollen), filtered honey (in addition to removing everything strained honey does, this process also removes pollen, and other suspended particles usually while heating the honey), ultra-sonicated honey (a non-thermal method for processing), creamed honey (is processed to create a spreadable honey containing a large quantity of small crystals which hampers the shaping of large crystals), dried honey (has had it’s moisture content removed to create honey granules), comb honey (honey still contained within the honeycomb and packaged in cut chunks), and chunk honey (similar to comb honey, though the cut chunks are immersed in liquid honey).

Physical Properties of Honey

Honey varieties have differing physical traits depending on factors such as water content, temperature, the percentages of particular sugars, and which types of flowers the bees collected nectar from. Honey has the ability to absorb moisture out of the air which is why it’s best kept sealed in a low-humidity environment to prevent fermentation.

Unprocessed honey contains more sugar than the amount of water it contains can typically dissolve at normal temperatures, making it a supersaturated liquid. Honey will crystallize when left at room temperature: the glucose in honey precipitates into solid fragments at room temperature because honey is a super cooled liquid at room temperature. Crystallized honey has not “gone bad” it simply needs to be reheated to bring it to a more liquid consistency (crystallized honey will melt at 104-122°F).

As honey is cooled, rather than freezing solid it becomes more and more viscous. Honey is a super cooled liquid and with decreasing temperatures it will become thick, appear to be solid, and will keep flowing, though at very plodding rates. Temperatures dipping to between -44°F and -60°F causes honey to enter into a glassy state, becoming a non-crystalline solid (amorphous). A few types - such as honey from heather or manuka - liquefy when stirred, but takes on a gel-like state when left motionless. The other factor that greatly affects the viscosity of honey is water content. The higher the water content, the lower the viscosity and the lower the quality of honey.

Crystallization of Honey: What Does it Mean?

Crystallization of honey is possible and very common, but does not effect the quality or edibility. Honey’s content ratio of sugars, fructose to glucose, and dextrin are the main factors that affect the crystallization of honey. While at room temperature (or any temperature below it’s melting point, but not below 41°F since at that point the honey is frozen and it’s original texture is preserved), honey will crystallize either spontaneously or if a seed crystal is added.

When melting crystallized honey it is very important not too apply too much heat too fast because it can result in localized caramelization. Also, many of the substances in honey can be negatively affected by heating such as a change in flavor, aroma, and destruction of enzymes. It is best to heat honey at low temperatures for a short period. Leaving it in warm water and changing out the water periodically is a trusted method.

Honey will caramelize as it is heated, darkening in color, and if heated for too long it is subject to burning. Since honey contains fructose and acids, the temperature needed to caramelize honey is lowered and it will caramelize easier, and quicker. The exact temperature needed to caramelize honey varies depending on it’s composition, but it’s somewhere in the range of 158°F and 230°F. Inversely, lower temperatures can cause crystallization.

Testing the Quality of Honey

Honey actually demonstrates varying levels of electrical conductivity due to the presence of acids and minerals - the types of electrolytes contained in honey. One way honey is tested for quality and type is by measuring it’s electrical conductivity to determine ash content. Another way it is tested is through the effects honey has on light. You can use this test to determine the water content of honey because it alters it’s refractive index. Determining the water content is important because a high water content can mean honey is more likely to ferment.

The floral source of honey can be tested by studying the pollens and spores in raw honey. The floral source has a large impact on the flavor and aroma of honey. Bees carry an electrostatic charge and can attract more than just pollen and spores - they can attract radioactive particles, dust or particulate pollution which can be useful in environmental studies.

There are three primary indicators to determine how good of quality your honey is. Firstly, it should be rather viscous and pour in a steady stream without dripping. The runnier the honey (less viscous) the higher the water content meaning it will have a short shelf life and will likely have a weak flavor.

The second indication of a ripe, fresh honey is it’s sweet scent that often hints of their floral source. Last, but not least, the taste is the most important indicator and really comes down to a matter of one’s own opinion. Raw honeys tend to have a much stronger flavor that many prefer, but it can be too sweet for some. It’s not surprising that people prefer the pasteurized, liquid, golden colored honey in those plastic, bear-shaped, squeeze bottles since it’s the most familiar and common, not to mention it’s ease in pouring.

How Honey Loses it’s Quality

Honey has a very low water content which gives it a long shelf life if kept away from humidity and moisture. If honey does happen to be exposed to a lot of moisture, it will eventually dilute enough to begin fermenting.

Aside from moisture, other factors that affect the preservation of honey is temperature and oxidation. It’s important to store honey in plastic, or glass. Metal jars will oxidize from the acids found in honey and wooden vessels are not good either because the honey tends to absorb the natural oils found in the wood thus becoming discolored and even taking on the flavor of the wood.

When honey crystallizes and you want to re-liquefy it, it is important to not over heat the honey. Heating honey too much will likely cause it to lose it’s antibacterial elements and the more you heat it up the more enzymes are lost and eventually the honey will caramelize.

Historic, Cultural, and Religious Significance

Humans have been consuming honey for centuries using it as a sweetener and flavoring in various foods and beverages. It is presumed that humans have been collecting honey for at least 8,000 years. Ancient cultures that utilized honey in their daily lives included the Egyptians, Romans, Chinese, and Mayans. They primarily used it as a sweetener for their foods, but many cultures regarded it as a medicinal food to help treat for skin ailments (burns and rashes), and to help sooth sore throats. Archaeological discoveries of honey remains inside clay vessels in Georgia dating back to almost 5,500 years ago are the oldest samples of honey discovered. The ancient Egyptians not only used honey for consumption, but they also used it as part of their embalming process.

Honey shows historic relevance in many religions as well. It is the symbol of the new year in Jewish tradition, in Buddhism it has an important place in Madhu Purnima, the Christian New Testament references it’s consumption by John the Baptist, and the Prophet Muhammad is said to have promoted honey for it’s health benefits.

Medical Applications

Historically, honey was used both topically and consumed to treat ailments such as ulcers, cuts, burns, sore throats, and coughs. Modern medical research has explained the chemical properties of honey and deemed it beneficial as an antiseptic and antibacterial treatment. Studies have proven inconclusive, but many people who suffer from allergies often consume raw honey to help reduce their symptoms and believe it helps.

Along with health benefits, there are also health hazards associated with honey. Due to honey’s low water content, microorganisms do not grow in honey though it sometimes contains dormant endospores of Clostridium botulinum. The endospores have the potential to cause severe illness or even death in infants due to their immature intestinal tract. If you’ve ever wondered why there is a warning label on every jar of honey you buy regarding the consumption of honey by children under one year of age, and wondered what the reason is, this is why. Botulinum endospores are naturally present in honey and due to the underdeveloped digestive track of babies that young, they cannot destroy the bacteria and MAY develop botulism.

Toxic honey is also a possibility depending mostly on the flowers bees collect their pollen from. Logically speaking if there are certain plants that we know, as humans we cannot consume, it would make sense that honey containing their pollen could have a negative affect on us. In New Zealand, stricter requirements have been put on beekeepers to closely monitor tutu bush growth within 3km of their apiaries due it’s poisonous properties. Most commercially available honey has been processed extensively to remove pollens and bacteria so illness and/or death from consuming honey is unlikely.

To order, please email us at info@tenonanatche.com or call

Tel 315-519-2640

7:00am - 7:00pm - 7 Days a Week