Beekeepers often promote buying local honey. What exactly is local honey and why is it better for you? We have answers to these and other questions below.
What is Local Honey?
Local honey comes from hives in your area, and is produced when bees take nectar from native plants. For maximum benefits, the Farmer's Almanac recommends buying raw, unfiltered, unheated, honey from a beekeeper no more than 50 miles from your home.
Benefits of Local Honey
Local honey provides tremendous relief from seasonal allergies, many of which are caused by pollen. In making local honey, bees take pollen from those same plants. When you consume local honey, you are taking in trace amounts of those allergens and building an immunity to them. Those benefits are lost if you purchase something that's been commercially produced elsewhere.
To achieve the maximum benefits, your honey should be raw, unfiltered, and unheated. Heating and filtering honey will remove many of the beneficial enzymes, and will therefore reduce the health benefits significantly.
Overall Health Benefits
In addition to helping fight allergies, raw honey can provide you with a number of other health benefits, including:
Providing energy
Serving as an antioxidant
Aiding with restful sleep
Improving digestion
Soothing coughs
Healing wounds
Environmental Impact
Buying local honey is good for the environment in a number of ways. For starters, your honey doesn't have to be shipped hundreds or even thousands of miles. There are also no boxes or excess packaging to dispose of later. So buying from a local producer can lower your carbon footprint tremendously.
Humans are incredibly dependent on bees to pollinate their crops. And with colonies of bees collapsing, it's more important than ever to support local hives. By purchasing local honey, you're ensuring there are plenty of bees in your area who can pollinate crops and promote healthy plant life.
Supporting Local Businesses
Small businesses have faced more than their share of struggles over the past few years. By making local purchases, you're helping your friends and neighbors maintain their livelihoods during tough times. So not only is local honey good for your body, but it's great for the environment and regional economy as well.
Know What You're Getting
When you purchase store-bought honey, you can never be sure where the product came from or what process was used to make it. Furthermore, many commercial brands have been heated or filtered-two processes that will essentially remove all beneficial enzymes.
There are some definite benefits to raw, unfiltered local honey. That's one reason why we carefully extract our honey and never heat or filter it. We also want our neighbours to have plenty of local honey, which is why we never ship our honey. For local pickup at 18 Country Club Lane in Horseshoe Valley. By chance or call ahead, Kevin 705-730-4740