Raw honey is honey that has never been heated above hive temperature — around 35 °C. In Cyprus you’ll hear it called ávrasto (άβραστο — “unboiled”); in Greece, áthermo (άθερμο) or omó (ωμό). It is the same thing: honey that keeps its enzymes, its aroma and its pollen — and that will crystallise sooner or later, which is natural and a good sign. All Plan Bee honey is raw, and every batch has a permanent public page with its details.
What “raw” means — and what it doesn’t
Raw isn’t a certification or a label category; it’s the absence of an act. From the comb to the jar, the honey never passes through heating — not to re-liquefy it, not to make filtering easier, not to speed up bottling.
It also doesn’t mean more than it says. It doesn’t mean “better blossom” — that’s a different story, of place and season. And it doesn’t mean “organic”: that word is legally protected in the EU and requires certification, which is why we don’t use it. Raw says one specific, checkable thing: what the bees made reached your jar as it was.
On bottling day, a raw and a heated honey look identical. The difference shows with time — and is measured in a lab.
Why most honey is heated — and what it costs
Heating is convenience, not fraud. Warmed honey flows, filters fast, bottles easily and stays “pretty” on the shelf for a long time. It is still honey. But the cost is real, and it is measurable:
- Diastase. An enzyme the bees themselves add to the nectar. Heat destroys it, which is why it’s used as an indicator: EU rules require it to stay above a minimum. The more intact the honey, the higher the number.
- HMF. A compound that forms in honey with heating and with age. The EU limit is 40 mg/kg; fresh, unheated honey stays far below it — a single-digit value shows honey that was never heated and is from this year’s harvest.
- Aroma. The blossom’s volatile compounds are heat-sensitive. Whatever evaporates in the tank never returns to the jar.
And because HMF also rises with the years, not only with heat, freshness matters: our honey sells within its harvest year — nothing is carried over to the next.
Raw goes together with unfiltered
In our honey the two are inseparable. The honey passes only through a sieve — keeping out wax and anything that doesn’t belong in a jar — and is never filtered, so the blossom’s pollen stays in. That pollen isn’t decoration: it is what the pollen analysis reads, and it is what gives each harvest its name. Heavily heated and filtered honey loses exactly that — its identity.
Crystallisation is a feature, not a fault
In Cyprus the idea still circulates that crystallised honey means “they added sugar”. It’s the other way round. Crystallisation is a natural property of real honey: its sugars set with time and cold, each blossom at its own pace. Honey that stays liquid on a shelf forever has usually been heated to achieve it.
That’s why we bottle before winter, while the honey is still liquid — so it crystallises naturally in your jar, not in our tanks, where re-liquefying it would take heat.
One honest caveat: crystallisation alone is not a certificate — heated honey will also crystallise eventually. The real proof isn’t something you can see. It’s in the numbers.
Our proof: a page for every batch
Every jar of ours carries a batch code (LOT) — and that code is a permanent public address: there you see when the batch was harvested, extracted and bottled, and from which area. Whenever a batch is lab-analysed, we publish the results verbatim, next to the EU limits, together with the lab’s PDF. Low HMF, high diastase: that is “raw” written in numbers — by a third party, not by us.
For scale: EU rules allow honey up to 40 mg/kg HMF and up to 20% moisture. On a batch page you see the measured value next to each limit.
The first batch of the 2026 harvest, 2611, is already online with its production details; its lab analysis is under way and will be published on the same page. And these pages never come down: scan your jar five years from now and your batch will still be there — see all batches.
“Is it healthier?” — what we claim and what we don’t
The internet credits raw honey with miracles. We’ll stick to what we can stand behind: raw honey keeps enzymes, pollen and aroma that heating degrades — those are measurable, and we publish them. We promise no cures; honey is a food, not a medicine.
And one real precaution, no exceptions: honey — any honey, raw or heated — is not given to infants under 12 months.
How to re-liquefy it — without killing it
If you prefer your honey liquid, there is one right way: a bain-marie. Place the jar in warm water — up to 40 °C, about what your hand comfortably tolerates — stir now and then, and be patient; repeat if needed. Never the oven, never the microwave: you’d undo in your kitchen what we avoided at the apiary.
Or, simpler: don’t re-liquefy at all. Crystallised honey spreads beautifully and doesn’t drip. Keep it in a shaded cupboard at room temperature — not the fridge — and it doesn’t spoil.
Where to find raw honey in Cyprus
Ours is the current year’s harvest, in 700 g glass jars, while it lasts — when it’s gone, it’s gone until the next harvest. Order by phone or WhatsApp: you talk directly to the beekeeper.
And if you’re buying elsewhere — at a farmers’ market, from another small producer — two questions are enough: “do you heat it?” and “do you publish lab results?” A beekeeper who doesn’t heat their honey is glad to talk about it.
For us, “raw” isn’t a slogan. It’s one of our eleven practices — bottling before winter, no heating, ever — and like all of them, it has no exceptions.