Why is raw honey from Costco twice as expensive as Filtered ?

Seems to me that raw honey, which is honey right out of the hive, should be *cheaper* than filtered honey, which is honey that has been post processed.

But, pricing is the other way around. Why?

Reply to
Paul M. Cook
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"Natural", "organic" and anything else perceived to be healthy always costs more. It is probably because the processing allows it to ship and store better.

Reply to
gfretwell

Raw honey is filtered of course. It means unpasteurized. Like raw milk(which is illegal to sell) I always use raw honey supplied by bee keeper. THat is good choice. You may get stung if you eat real raw out of bee hive B4 filtered.

Reply to
Tony Hwang

| Seems to me that raw honey, which is honey right out of the | hive, should be *cheaper* than filtered honey, which is honey | that has been post processed. | | But, pricing is the other way around. | Why?

You didn't mention anything about brands or source, but there are two possible issues I know of: There's been an ongoing scandal in recent years with 1) Chinese honey being adulterated with heavy metals and 2) honey being thinned out with sugar syrup. With the very highly refined stuff it's very difficult to tell where it's from or whether it's been thinned, because there's very little left other than sugar and water.

So it makes sense that raw honey, from an accountable source (both in terms of flowers and location) would be more expensive than dubious, refined sugar syrup packaged by big distributors like Sue Bee or the other companies that sell pale, refined honey in cute, plastic "bear" bottles, because that honey might very well be Chinese honey rejected by other countries and/or watered down product.

If you want to research you can look up terms like "chinese honey scandal".

Reply to
Mayayana

My jar specifically says unfiltered.It has a slightly crystalline feel and never has been pourable even in August heat. It will dissolve in hot liquids and can be spread but no way is it going to work in a plastic bear squeeze bottle.

Reply to
rbowman

I deal with two bee keepers one near the city one further out in the farming area. As far as I know they run it thru something like coarse cheese cloth to filter out pieces of bee hive, wing of bees like that. Pure honey is very strong and depending on which flower nectar it is coming, has different smell. Like buck wheat flower, wild flower, Acacia flower, etc. We never use white sugar, some times brown raw sugar we use.

Reply to
Tony Hwang

Check your facts concerning raw milk.

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Reply to
RonNNN

I live up here in Canada. There is more than 10 year long battle going on in Ontario farmer against government. He is waging the battle with donated fund who support him. There in some cases black market raw milk but never in grocery stores.

Reply to
Tony Hwang

I expect to harvest some honey from my hives next summer . This will be mainly wildflower plus whatever else is blooming and producing nectar out in the woods - there is no commercial ag withing their foraging range . The price will be around $20 per pint plus shipping ... I will post availibility when I harvest - probably in midsummer . This will be raw honey filtered thru cheesecloth .

Reply to
Terry Coombs

My bad. I sometimes forget the Internet is a global thing! I suppose we all take for granted that the laws we each live by "is what it is".

Reply to
RonNNN

Interesting.

On the one hand, just calling it "organic" (which they do), can raise the price by differentiating the honey from the "other" honey.

But, I wonder if raw honey stores any better than filtered honey.

They're both of very high osmotic pressure, which is mostly what keeps the bacteria and mold at bay.

Reply to
Paul M. Cook

The bottle from Costco says right there on the label that it's totally unprocessed. Straight off the hive it says (from "American bees").

If you want, I can snap a photo of the label to prove that.

So, it seems to be as cheap as it can get (from "American bees" anyway).

Reply to
Paul M. Cook

I already used up the "Clover" filtered honey from Costco so I don't have the bottle anymore.

But it specifically says it's from bees who gather nectar from Clovers.

The raw honey bottle doesn't say what the plant nectars were, only that it was 'sourced in California, bottled in Texas'.

Here is a front and back picture of the bottle I just recently bought:

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Reply to
Paul M. Cook

Here is a picture of my jar of raw honey from Costco, bought just last week.

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It's twice the price of the filtered stuff from Costco for some reason.

Reply to
Paul M. Cook

I know a little about the Chinese scandal, but only enough to be dangerous.

I may be placing my trust in the wrong company, but, I sort of trust Costco that they're not selling Chinese honey.

I'm only comparing the Costco "Clover" filtered honey with the Costco Nature Nates raw honey (which is twice the price per ounce).

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Of the Chinese scandal, I only know half the story, which is that without the pollens in filtered honey, they can't tell where it came from.

But the other half of the story is what's wrong with the Chinese filtered honey versus the Costco filtered honey? I don't know.

Reply to
Paul M. Cook

You may know the answer to another question I have about this honey:

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What do those strange hieroglyphic symbols mean?

There is no word "organic" on it, nor any "USDA" symbol. But, there is a big "D" with a small "k" inside of it with "pareve" below that.

Similarly, my Costco "Kirkland" Maple Syrup has strange markings too!

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It has a big "U" with a circle around it and it says "USDA/Organic" and "Eco/Cert".

Notice that NONE of the symbols are common between the raw unfiltered honey and the pure right-from-the-tree maple syrup.

You'd think they'd have common symbols since they are both presumably pure products - but the symbols are totally different.

Anyone know what they mean?

Reply to
Paul M. Cook

These bees are "American bees". Says so right on the label!

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They are in the California Union, apparently, since the honey is "source from California" according to the label.

However, they fly the honey to Texas for packing, so, maybe the bees get tired going from California to Texas!

Reply to
Paul M. Cook

| I may be placing my trust in the wrong company, but, I sort of | trust Costco that they're not selling Chinese honey. |

Why would you trust that? If it's highly refined honey then even if Costco is honest they have no way of confirming the source. Since it's store brand it's likely that they buy it from a big wholesale distributor, which may very well deal in tanker ships that arrive and pump their stock into giant holding tanks, to then be sold by the tanker-truck-load to retailers or brand name honey packagers. That's the problem with store brand. It's also an increasing problem with international commerce.

I saw something recently about olive oil scams, and junk olive oil being shipped through Greece just so it could get a Greek label. I saw another article about how much fish sold is not the fish they say it is. A scientist was testing the DNA. One case was a fish sandwich shack in Florida with a sign saying the fish was local. The fish sandwiches turned out to be fresh water giant catfish from Vietnam. (Agent orange, anyone?) When asked about the sign saying the fish was local, the proprietor said something like, "It is local. I buy it from the guy up the street."

If you want to trust there needs to be some basis for that. If you buy Ed's wildflower honey from Ed's Honey Farm in Elmira, NY, and Ed provides a way to contact him, as well as a website, then you *might* be able to trust Ed. If Costco deserved your trust they'd know about the honey they sell, they'd tell you, and they'd make sure the honey producer was clearly credited on the label. The fact that it's store brand indicates that the producer is not taking responsibility

*and* that Costco is confident you don't care about that.

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| Sorry, I can't see images on that site.

| But the other half of the story is what's wrong with the Chinese | filtered honey versus the Costco filtered honey? I don't know. |

It might be watered down. It might contain toxins. And the Costco honey might be the Chinese honey. Personally I'd assume it *is*. they target people looking for bargains who don't ask questions when they have the proverbial 50% off stereos that fell off the back of a truck. That's the perfect venue for Chinese honey. The only question would be how many laundering levels would Costco want in place in order to accept it. As noted above, I would guess that they very well may have no way of knowing exactly what their direct supplier is selling.

Reply to
Mayayana

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That's what I got at CostCo.

Reply to
rbowman

IMO, At the best the honey could come from bee keeper co-op. I never buy honey from store. I personally buy from independent small operation bee keeper who usually started out as amateur, ended up producing more honey, not enough to commercialize but can share with some folks. Concern for any Chinese food stuff is purity free of heavy metal and PCB or other contaminants.

Korea imports lot of them from China, one story, they mixed in lead pellets into bulk dried hot pepper since it is sold by the weight. In Korean market any thing from China is less expensive.

Reply to
Tony Hwang

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