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Protein content  of honey causes it to have lower surface tension. Any liquid (including honey) with lower surface tension tends to have air bubbles.

For example, you cannot make bubbles from pure water due to its high surface tension. But you can decrease its surface tension by adding soap water, and then make bubbles.

Pure honey also crystalizes due to presence of natural glucose in it, this is not a sign of adulteration. In fact, creamed honey is sold in the US as it is easy to spread on bread/toast etc. Honey with low glucose to fructose ratio crystalize less often than others. For example acacia honey doesn’t crystalize often. 

Keep the crystalized honey in sunlight or warm water to bring it back to normal form and use.

Original honey when stored in air-tight container has virtually unlimited shelf-life as many harmful bacteria, fungus cannot survive in honey. This is due to its ability to absorb moisture, the presence of natural phenolic acids, enzymes that can produce hydrogen peroxide,  and other bio active compounds in it.

That’s why honey is used as natural antibiotic, applied on pimples and wounds.

If bees collect nectar from organically produced flowers (i.e. without using synthetic pesticides and fertilizers) and make honey, then it should be called organic honey. Availability of large-scale organic farms is a challenge.

Honey produced in forest regions is always organic, by default, as forests are free from air & water pollution, harmful pesticides, fertilizers, chemicals due to absence of human and industrial activity.

Honey from Kashmir region can also be considered organic for similar reasons.

Type of flowers that bees collect nectar from to make honey, and the weather influences the color of honey. That’s why original honey comes in various colors.

Generally, darker honey has more antioxidants. But there are exceptions. 

Honey gets its color due to the presence of natural pigments (carotenoids and anthocyanins) other minor compounds. Honey’s medicinal properties are due to polyphenolic compounds , amino acids, vitamins, enzymes, organic acids & minerals, which are either produced by the bees or already present in the nectar.

It’s found that there’s a good positive correlation between the darkness of honey and levels of these useful compounds. Dark chocolate is considered healthier than normal chocolates for similar reasons.

They either blend multiple low-cost varieties or sell multifloral honey only, which looks yellow in color. Since popular companies sell yellow color honey only, many tend to believe natural honey exists in just one color. Some genuine sellers also sell single variety of honey since maintaining multiple verities need extra inventory planning and investment.

Characteristics of honey like taste, color, texture, aroma, benefits depend primarily on the following.

1. Type of flowers from which nectar is collected (ex: neem, tulsi, eucalyptus etc.) by bees to make honey
2. Geographical region (ex: honey from Kashmir is different from other regions. Weather, pollution, altitude, flower diversity etc. of the region influence honey)
3. Health of the honey bees (Improper management of hives, lack of sufficient flowers, pesticide exposure, pests make bees fall sick)

Bees usually collect nectar from whatever the flowers available nearby and make honey. This is called multifloral honey.

If bees collect nectar from a single variety of flower it’s called monofloral honey. For example, tulsi plants are grown in large areas for herbal medicine production. When beekeepers keep bee boxes in such plantations , bees collect majority of their nectar from tulsi flowers and make monofloral tulsi honey.

Some people prefer monofloral honey due to their unique taste, color, texture, aroma, benefits.

1. Foraging bee collects nectar from nearby flowers and hand over it to a group of bees waiting at it’s home (hive). 70 to 80 % of nectar is just water.
2. Inside the hive, nectar gets transferred from one bee to another until it gets deposited in the wax cells. In this process (know as regurgitation) bees add enzymes, proteins, partially digest & process nectar to convert it into honey. At this stage water level comes down to 50 to 70%
3. Now bees bring down the water level to ~18% by generating body heat and fluttering the wings to circulate air.
4. After this, bees seal the cells air-tight with wax produced from their glands. Once sealed, the honey never spoils.

1. Feeding bees with sugar, giving antibiotics to them: This happens at the farmer’s (beekeeper) level. When sufficient flowers are not there in the nearby area, bees are fed with sugar for their survival. Feeding sugar impacts bees and any honey they make. When they fall sick, they are given antibiotics, which might contaminate honey. Migratory-beekeeping is the better alternative for this.
2. Over Heating and industrial processing of honey: Some sellers extract unripen honey (honey that’s not yet sealed by bees with wax), for commercial reasons. Such honey spoils faster due to high water content. To avoid this, they heat honey to bring down water content to ~18%, add preservatives. Heated honey flows faster and is easier to deal with by machines. That’s why large scale sellers who use machines to fill bottles heat honey. Excessively Heated and processed honey is not as useful as raw honey. For example, enzymes diastase, invertase present in honey and antibacterial activity are sensitive to heat.
3. Adding flavors: Some clever sellers add flavors to honey, to make it tastier, smell better than original honey. This is to trick customers into believing their honey is original. Many customers fall for this and choose tastier honey over truly original honey.
4. Mixing with cheaper sweeteners like corn syrup: Some sellers adulterate honey by adding cheaper sweeteners such as HFCS (high fructose corn syrups). HFCS is much cheaper and harmful than normal sugar. Some do this to make money fast while many others do this as they spend so much on sales, marketing, distribution that they don’t have sufficient funds to procure high-quality honey from farmers. We spend as low as possible on seller-centric expenses so that we have sufficient money to spend on customer-centric expenses like quality maintenance.

Beekeeper (honey farmer) is a person who keeps honey bees in portable boxes (hives). Bees live in the hives, freely collect nectar from nearby flowers and make honey. The farmers extract honey without harming the bees and their hives, using extractors. Their primary responsibility is to keep boxes nearby plants/trees with nectar producing flowers. It’s a 4500-year-old practice. Honey sellers’ responsibility is to get high-quality honey from genuine farmers and make it safely, hygienically reach the customers.

Bees need flowers to make honey but no area has flowers 365 days. Farmers who do beekeeping in a fixed location feed bees with sugar when flowers are not there. 

But some farmers, when flowers are not there in their area, migrate the bee boxes to a new area which has seasonal flowers at that time. They keep migrating from one area to another in search of flowers so that bees continue collecting natural nectar and make honey. This is called migratory beekeeping.

They produce multiple varieties of honey (neem, tulsi, eucalyptus etc.) as they keep migrating. We sell multiple varieties of honey as we source them from migratory beekeepers.

Honey that’s not gone through excessive heating, ultra filtering, industrial processing, which alter natural properties of honey, is called raw honey. 

Processed honey consistently has the same thickness, color, smell, taste etc. like a man-made product. This is what often you find in supermarkets. Whereas original raw honey purchased from farmers doesn’t have consistency since seasons, weather, flower source naturally impact honey properties.

One should consume raw honey to get most benefits.