This Isn't Normal Honey

Our honey comes from alfalfa, sweet clover, and prairie wildflowers. They naturally make a honey that is a light golden color when liquid, and then solid white once it crystallizes. Since we don't pasteurize the honey to keep it liquid, you are seeing the honey in its natural state.

All of our honey is harvested from our family farm in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. We never blend our honey or source it from other countries.

Most mass-market honey is a golden liquid color because they have taken honey from many sources, blended it together, and then heat-treated (pasteurized) the honey. This achieves three things: (1) lowering costs by blending cheaper honey with some higher-quality honey, (2) a consistent golden-yellow honey, and (3) delays the crystallization process so the honey stays liquid on store shelves. Unfortunately, this processing also strips away beneficial nutrition and flavor for the sake of consistency and cost. We don't mess around with blending or heat-treating our honey, so you get high-quality honey as naturally as the bees intended!

Since we never pasteurize our honey, the prairie honey that we harvest crystallizes very quickly and firmly, and can be quite hard to scoop or spread out of the jar. To address this, we apply a "creaming" process while the honey is crystallizing. It's not as fancy as it sounds — we simply stir the honey for a set period of time as it crystallizes. This process controls the size of the crystals so that they become smaller and finer. This allows us to produce a honey that is pleasant to use, creamy and smooth on the tongue, while preserving the original nutrition and flavor profile of the honey.

Honey doesn't actually require any processing or pasteurization to be safe to eat and have an extremely long shelf life since it is naturally antibacterial and antimicrobial. Please note: there is a risk of the presence of Clostridium botulinum (botulism) spores in all honey, both pasteurized and unpasteurized. Adults and older children can digest these without any risk, however, do not feed honey to infants less than 1 year old as their digestive systems have not fully developed to kill these spores.

We put a 5 year best before date on our honey, but as long as you store it properly, it can last even longer than that. However, unlike wine or cheese, honey doesn't get better with age — your honey is meant to be enjoyed, not saved! Ideal storage conditions: keep it in a cool, dry area at room temperature or lower with relative humidity below 50%, and avoid direct sunlight.

We're really confident you will, but if it turns out that you're not happy with your purchase, you can reach out to us via email at info@threeforagers.ca (or reply to your order confirmation) and we'll refund your money!