 About our Honey :
The honey produced in our area is 100% white, and grades as Canada #1 - There is nothing better!
To be classified as Canada #1 White honey, the honey must have all been produced within Canada, must have a moisture content of 17.8% or less, and must be within a certain colour classification rating. The blending of darker honey with lighter honey to produce products which just meet the white colour classification is a common practice in the honey packing industry. By making these blends, they attempt to produce a product which meets all of the standards of white honey, while incorporating some of the darker honeys. The resulting blended product is acceptable to most consumers, as that is what they are used to receiving on the store shelf, but it is not the way Howland's Honey produces their product. All of our honey is white honey. There is no blending of dark and light to get a product which just slips under the colour wire. In fact, most of our product is at the other end of the spectrum, the super white category.
We remove our honey from the bees without the use of chemical repellants. In fact, our honey producing area consists primarily of forage crops, like clover and alfalfa, and these crops are not sprayed with chemicals. Although we cannot claim to organically produce honey, as our bees will fly up to 5 miles in any direction, we are about as close to being organic as you can get with honey. We further ensure our quality by only employing enough heat to allow us to filter the nectar before packing.
Since the honey produced in our area will granulate (crystalize) unless heated to a high temperature, and since that granulation may not produce the kind of smooth creamy product our customers have come to love, we seed the honey with finely granulated white honey before packaging. The seed starts a chain reaction of rapid granulation within the honey, resulting in honey that we describe as creamed. It spreads like butter, but doesn't run up your wrist or into your lap!
Creamed honey is a Canadian phenomenon. Kept at room temperatures, it has a virtually never ending shelf life. Slightly warming the creamed product will return it to its liquid state for easy use in baking recipes. If there is a problem with creamed honey, it's that it is too easy to use and as a result, may not last as long as the other honeys you've tried. Isn't that always the case when you buy the best?
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