BEE-SPLAINING: What is raw honey?

What is raw honey? This should be a really easy question to answer. But, as it turns out, consumers, beekeepers, honey producers and even different authorities do not necessarily mean exactly the same thing when they use the word “raw”.

Generally speaking, raw honey is understood to mean honey that has undergone minimal processing after being removed from the hive, particularly in relation to heating and filtration. But there is no universally accepted definition establishing exactly how much processing is too much. And that is where a seemingly simple description becomes surprisingly complicated.

What is raw honey?

Ask a consumer what raw honey is and they will probably describe a honey that is as close as possible to the honey produced by the bees. They may expect it to be unpasteurised, minimally filtered, never subjected to high temperatures and still containing its naturally occurring pollen and enzymes.

Most beekeepers would probably recognise that description too. But ask exactly what “minimally processed” means and the answers start to differ.

At the purist end of the spectrum, some people might argue that the only truly raw honey is comb honey: still sealed in the wax cells exactly as the bees left it.

Does raw honey mean unprocessed honey?

Can honey be extracted from the comb and still be raw? Most beekeepers would say yes. Can it be strained to remove pieces of wax? Most beekeepers would answer yes to that question too, but not all. And then it gets trickier. Is strained honey the same as filtered honey? What if crystallised honey is gently warmed so that it can be bottled? And what about time? Is only freshly harvested honey raw, or can honey that has naturally aged in storage still be considered raw?

There is no single answer to all of those questions, because “raw honey” is not a universally standardised product category.

Is there a legal definition of raw honey?

In Ireland and the EU, honey itself is tightly defined. Legislation specifies what can legally be sold as honey and establishes compositional criteria including moisture, sugars, diastase activity and hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF). Honey sold simply as honey cannot have other food ingredients added to it.

The EU legislation also recognises different types of honey. Honey can be classified according to origin. These include blossom or nectar honey and honeydew honey. Honey can also be described according to its method of production or presentation, including comb honey, chunk honey or cut comb in honey, drained honey, extracted honey and pressed honey, as well as the separate category of baker’s honey.

Recent EU legislation has removed filtered honey as a permitted definition and provides for further criteria intended to ensure that pollen is not removed or the natural pollen spectrum altered in ordinary honey.

There is no legal EU definition of raw honey

What EU legislation does not currently provide is a separate legal category called raw honey.

In other words, legislation can tell us what extracted honey, pressed honey or comb honey is, but it does not currently give us an equivalent definition telling us exactly what raw honey is.

This creates an interesting situation. The law already requires honey to meet compositional standards and provides for criteria to ensure that honey has not been heated or treated in such a way that its natural enzymes are destroyed or significantly deactivated. But it does not provide one agreed legal definition telling producers exactly when honey becomes — or stops being — raw.

The absence of a definition is particularly interesting because the issue was explicitly debated during the most recent revision of the EU honey rules. In December 2023, the European Parliament adopted amendments proposing that honey marketed as “raw honey” or “unheated honey” should meet additional criteria relating to heat treatment and invertase activity, a heat-sensitive enzyme. The proposal was intended to give consumers a way to distinguish honey that had not undergone significant heat treatment. However, that proposed raw/unheated honey category did not make it into the final Directive (EU) 2024/1438. So legislators considered creating a more specific standard for the term, but the current legislation still leaves raw honey without its own legal definition.

What is the position in other countries and regions?

The position is not necessarily clearer elsewhere. In the UK, raw honey is not a separate reserved description under honey legislation, although the Food Standards Agency uses the term descriptively in its Honey Risk Profile.

In the United States, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has defined raw honey for particular commercial specification purposes as honey as it exists in the hive or is obtained by extraction but not filtration. That does not, however, create a universal international definition of raw honey.

Can honey legally be labelled as raw?

The use of the word raw on a honey label sits in something of a regulatory grey area. “Raw honey” is not a defined product category under current EU honey legislation, but voluntary food information is permitted provided that it is accurate, clear and does not mislead or confuse consumers. Different authorities can also interpret the term differently. In practice, a producer using the term raw therefore needs to be able to substantiate what they mean by it.

At the time of writing, in September 2026, honey legislation and labelling requirements are changing rapidly. At the same time, consumers are paying closer attention to the small print and asking more questions about the provenance, production and processing of the food they consume. Regulators and legislators are also giving greater attention to honey origin, authenticity, traceability and labelling. Producers, consumers and anyone relying on the regulatory meaning of these terms should therefore check current guidance, as the position may change.

Why do beekeepers call their honey raw?

If legislation already tells us what honey should be, why do beekeepers need the word raw at all? In an ideal honey market, perhaps we wouldn’t.

Once we know that a jar contains genuine honey that has been appropriately handled, “raw” should not really be its most interesting characteristic. We could talk instead about where it was harvested, which flowers produced it, the season, its colour and texture, and whether it tastes mild and floral, rich and herbal or dark and strongly flavoured.

But consumers are navigating a market that also contains heavily processed honey and, more seriously, honey fraud and adulteration. Beekeepers therefore need a simple way of communicating that their honey has been minimally handled and remains close to the state in which the bees produced it. “Raw” has become useful shorthand for that — even though everyone has not agreed precisely what the shorthand means.

From hive to jar: how is honey processed?

The word raw can give the impression that nothing has happened to the honey between the hive and the jar. In reality, unless you are eating comb honey, the honey has to be removed from the comb somehow.

Most extracted honey is produced by removing the wax cappings covering the cells and placing the frames in an extractor. Centrifugal force spins the honey from the comb while leaving the comb largely intact so that it can be returned to the bees.

But that is not the only method.

Honey can also be removed by pressing the comb. This is particularly useful for some types of honey that do not extract easily. Heather honey, for example, is thixotropic: it has a gel-like consistency when undisturbed and does not readily flow from the comb during normal centrifugal extraction. Pressing is therefore commonly used to extract it.

Filtering, straining or nothing at all?

Once removed from the comb, honey may be allowed to settle and strained to remove fragments of wax and other debris before bottling.

All of this is processing in the ordinary meaning of the word. Yet most practical definitions of raw honey do not regard extracting, settling and straining as incompatible with the term.

Straining is also not necessarily the same as the much finer filtration consumers may associate with commercially processed honey. The important question is what is being removed. Passing freshly extracted honey through a strainer to remove fragments of wax is quite different from processing that significantly removes pollen and other very fine particles.

So “raw” is generally better understood as minimally processed, rather than literally unprocessed.

Can raw honey be warmed?

This is where beekeeper definitions often begin to diverge.

Honey does not remain conveniently liquid forever. Some honeys crystallise very quickly, and a beekeeper may occasionally need to warm crystallised honey sufficiently to make it workable or suitable for bottling.

Many beekeepers use the natural temperature within the hive as a practical benchmark when deciding how much warming they consider acceptable for raw honey. Honeybee colonies regulate the brood nest very closely, generally at around 33–36°C, with approximately 35°C commonly reported.

The reasoning is straightforward: gently warming honey to approximately a temperature it naturally encounters within a functioning colony is quite different from subjecting it to substantial heat treatment.

But this is a beekeeper convention, not a legal definition of raw honey.

What temperature is too hot for raw honey?

There is no universally agreed temperature at which honey suddenly switches from raw to not raw. All heating changes honey to some degree, but the extent of that change depends on both temperature and time. Around 40°C is a useful practical reference point rather than a magic cut-off: heat-sensitive enzymes such as invertase can begin to lose activity in this range when exposure is long enough, while shorter exposures may produce much smaller measurable changes. During the 2023 revision of the EU honey rules, the European Parliament itself proposed 40°C (±5°C) as the point above which heat-related degradation should be declared, although that threshold was not retained in the final Directive. For that reason, many beekeepers use approximately 40°C as a practical upper boundary for honey they describe as raw, while choosing lower temperatures wherever possible.

So brief, gentle warming and prolonged or higher-temperature heating both alter honey, but they do not alter it to the same extent or necessarily in the same ways. A statement such as “our raw honey is never warmed above 35°C” can therefore be a useful description of an individual producer’s processing standard: it tells the consumer that the beekeeper has deliberately chosen a conservative temperature intended to minimise changes to the honey, without claiming that 35°C or 40°C is a universal legal definition of raw honey.

Raw honey changes even when we do nothing to it

There is another complication that receives much less attention: honey ages.

A jar can be extracted, strained and bottled without deliberate heating and still change over time. Storage temperature and length of storage affect honey’s physical and chemical characteristics.

What is HMF in honey, and why does it matter?

One useful example is hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF), a compound that forms from sugars as honey ages and when it is exposed to heat. Fresh honey normally contains very little HMF. Because HMF levels generally increase with time and temperature, HMF is widely used as an indicator of honey quality and of its heating and storage history. The Codex standard sets a general maximum of 40 mg/kg after processing or blending, with a higher limit for honeys from tropical regions. Importantly, this is a quality criterion rather than a toxicity threshold: a high HMF result can tell us that honey has aged, been stored warm or been subjected to substantial heat, but it does not by itself tell us which of those occurred.

HMF is absorbed and metabolised by the human body, and laboratory and animal research has reported both potentially harmful and potentially beneficial biological effects. However, safe levels of human dietary exposure are not well established, so the presence of HMF in honey should not be interpreted as a simple measure of whether that honey is safe or unsafe. For the purposes of raw honey, the main reason we want to keep HMF low is that rising HMF is evidence of chemical change through heat or ageing and therefore indicates that the honey is moving further away from its fresh state.

Research examining prolonged storage has found changes in a range of characteristics, including HMF, diastase and invertase activity, sugars, amino acids and vitamins.

Why does raw honey crystallise?

Honey also crystallises as it ages, although the speed varies enormously between different honeys. Floral source and the resulting proportions of different sugars are particularly important, alongside moisture and temperature.

This means crystallisation is not a reliable test of whether honey is raw. Some perfectly raw honeys crystallise rapidly, while others remain naturally liquid for much longer.

More importantly, it prevents us from dividing honey neatly into raw and unchanged versus processed and altered.

All honey has a history.

A jar being described as raw can tell you something about how the producer says it was handled. It does not necessarily tell you how old that honey is or how it has been stored.

Why does enzymatic activity matter in honey?

Enzymatic activity is sensitive to heat and can also decline as honey ages. It is frequently mentioned in discussions about raw honey, but it is rarely explained.

Enzymes are proteins that act as biological catalysts, helping particular chemical reactions to take place. Honey naturally contains several enzymes, including diastase, invertase and glucose oxidase, originating from the bees and, to varying degrees, the nectar from which the honey was made.

When we talk about preserving enzymatic activity, we are therefore not simply talking about whether enzymes are “present”. What matters is whether those proteins retain the structure necessary to perform their normal catalytic function.

Heat can alter that structure and reduce enzyme activity. The effect depends on factors including the temperature reached and how long the honey remains at that temperature. Storage and ageing can also reduce the activity of some enzymes.

This is important enough that diastase activity is one of the quality criteria used in honey legislation, and the revised EU framework specifically provides for criteria intended to ensure that natural enzymes have not been destroyed or significantly deactivated through heating or treatment.

For beekeepers trying to preserve honey as close as practicable to its naturally produced state, maintaining enzymatic activity is therefore one reason to avoid unnecessary or excessive heating.

That is a more meaningful explanation than saying that heating “kills the enzymes”. Enzymes are not living organisms that can be killed. Heat can alter their molecular structure and consequently reduce or prevent their normal activity.

Does raw honey have more health benefits than heavily processed honey?

If we compare two jars of exactly the same honey — from the same bees, the same harvest and the same batch — but one has been minimally processed while the other has undergone substantial heating and fine filtration, there are measurable differences between them.

Heating alters the activity of naturally occurring enzymes in honey, including diastase and invertase, with the extent of those changes depending on temperature and time. Heating can also alter the phenolic profile of honey. Fine filtration can substantially reduce its pollen content, and research has shown that this can also affect phenolic content because pollen itself contains phenolic compounds. Studies comparing honey before and after commercial processing have also found that heat and filtration can reduce its antimicrobial activity, although the effect varies between honeys.

Yes, it does

So, all other things being equal, there is a good scientific basis for choosing the minimally processed honey if the aim is to preserve as much as possible of the original honey’s composition and biological activity. There is also some human clinical evidence suggesting benefits from unprocessed/raw honey, although the evidence is not yet strong enough to say that raw honey will necessarily produce greater health benefits in every circumstance.

That does not mean that the word raw automatically makes one honey better than every other honey. Processing is only one part of the picture. The properties of the honey before processing matter enormously too — and one of the most important influences is its botanical origin.

Does the botanical origin of honey matter?

Processing is only one factor that influences the properties of honey. Botanical origin matters too. Different nectar sources produce honeys with different profiles of enzymes, phenolic compounds, organic acids and other bioactive constituents, and studies comparing honeys from different floral sources have found substantial differences in antibacterial activity.

Manuka honey is a good example. Much of its characteristic non-peroxide antibacterial activity is associated with methylglyoxal (MGO), which is linked to compounds originating in Manuka nectar. Ling heather honey has also shown high antibacterial activity in comparative studies, although its activity is not identical to Manuka honey and can depend more strongly on hydrogen peroxide and other components. So the word “raw” cannot, on its own, tell us which honey has the strongest biological properties. Floral source, composition, processing and storage all matter.

If your aim is to buy honey whose natural characteristics and enzymatic activity have been preserved as far as practicable, minimally processed honey is a sensible thing to look for. But the word raw on its own still leaves important questions unanswered.

What should you look for when buying raw honey?

Perhaps the most useful thing you can do is know who produced your honey.

Ask where it came from. Who produced it? What flowers were the bees foraging on? When was it harvested? How was it extracted? Was it warmed and, if so, why? Was it simply strained or subjected to finer filtration? How has it been stored?

A trusted honey producer should be able to answer those questions.

And once they can, the word raw becomes much more meaningful because it is backed by traceability rather than simply printed on a label.

Perhaps that is the real answer to what should have been a very simple question.

Raw honey generally means honey that has been minimally processed after leaving the hive. But the term does not tell you everything about the honey in the jar. Once authenticity and appropriate handling are established, its origin, floral source, season, producer, flavour and provenance tell us far more about what makes one genuine honey different from another.

Know your producer, and you can know much more about your honey.

Key takeaways

• Raw honey generally means honey that has undergone minimal processing, particularly in relation to heating and filtration, but there is no universally agreed definition.
• “Raw honey” is not currently a separate legal category under Irish or EU honey legislation, although honey itself is tightly regulated.
• Extracting, settling and ordinary straining do not necessarily prevent honey from being considered raw; fine filtration that substantially removes pollen is a different process.
• There is no universal temperature at which honey suddenly stops being raw. Temperature and time both matter, and approximately 40°C is sometimes used as a practical upper boundary.
• All other things being equal, minimally processed honey retains more of the original honey’s composition and biological activity than the same honey subjected to substantial heating and fine filtration.

Hanna Bäckmo

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