What Is Raw Honey? Definition, Testing & UK Rules

Raw honey is honey that has not been heated above the temperatures a working hive reaches, has been strained rather than finely filtered, and has had nothing added and nothing removed. No UK or EU law defines the term, so the words on the label are only as good as the figures behind them — chiefly two laboratory markers, HMF and diastase activity, tested batch by batch. This guide sets out what careful producers mean by raw, what pasteurisation and fine filtration change, and what to ask a seller before you pay for a raw claim.

Raw honey is honey as it left the comb: extracted cool, passed through a strainer to take out wax and debris, and jarred with its pollen still in it.

Is there a legal definition of raw honey?

No. The Honey (England) Regulations 2015 — the instrument that governs what may be sold as honey in England, with parallel regulations elsewhere in the UK — define honey itself, set compositional limits, and name specific categories such as baker’s honey and filtered honey. The word “raw” appears nowhere in them, and EU honey law has no definition either. “Raw” is a voluntary description, governed only by the general rule that food information must not mislead.

That does not make it meaningless. In 2024 the First-tier Tribunal decided Odysea Ltd v London Borough of Waltham Forest [2024] UKFTT 157 (GRC), thought to be the first UK judgment on the phrase. Trading standards argued that because the 2015 Regulations already restrict processing and heating, all compliant honey could be described as raw — so the word implied special characteristics the honey did not have, and misled. The tribunal disagreed — but only because the producer could evidence what had been done to its honey: unpasteurised, minimally handled, with laboratory results showing measurable differences from conventionally processed jars. The judge found the word “accurately conveys the lack of processing, including but not limited to heating”. For the buyer, the principle follows directly: a raw claim stands or falls on evidence of process. Undefined is not the same as unaccountable.

In practice, producers who use the word carefully mean three things:

• Not heated above the temperatures found in a working hive — no pasteurisation, no hot-room liquefying.
• Strained, not fine-filtered — wax and debris out, pollen left in.
• Nothing added, nothing removed — no blending down, no other processing beyond the straining.

What is pasteurised honey, and why is it made?

Pasteurised honey is honey that has been heated briefly to well above hive temperature and cooled again. No UK rule requires honey to be pasteurised; the reasons it is done are commercial. Heating sharply lowers viscosity, which makes honey faster to pump, filter and bottle at industrial scale, and honeys with more than about 18% water are at risk of fermenting.

All of that is ordinary, lawful food processing. But it leaves measurable traces, which is where the two figures below come in: heating raises HMF and lowers diastase activity, and those changes do not reverse.

What is the difference between strained and filtered honey?

Straining passes honey through a mesh coarse enough to remove wax flakes, bee parts and other debris while letting everything microscopic — including pollen — through. Fine filtration pushes warmed honey through very fine filters under pressure and takes the pollen out along with the debris.

The law marks the difference. Under the rules amended by Directive 2014/63/EU, pollen is a natural constituent of honey, not an ingredient, and may not be removed except where unavoidable in the removal of foreign matter. Honey that has had significant pollen removed must be sold under the specific name “filtered honey” — a distinct labelled category in the 2015 Regulations, not ordinary honey.

Why should a buyer care? Because pollen is the fingerprint. Laboratories identify the plant species present in a honey’s pollen — a discipline called melissopalynology — to check its botanical and geographical origin: whether a thyme honey actually saw thyme, whether a “Greek” honey is Greek. Strip the pollen out and those claims become far harder to verify. Our guide to how to tell if honey is real covers the verification methods in detail.

How do you check a raw claim? The two figures

Two laboratory markers make heating and age visible, and both carry legal limits in the 2015 Regulations:

• HMF (hydroxymethylfurfural) is virtually absent in newly extracted honey and forms as fructose slowly breaks down — slowly at ambient temperatures, quickly with heating. UK law allows at most 40 mg/kg for most honey (80 mg/kg for honey of declared tropical origin). A figure close to zero is what freshly extracted, gently handled honey shows; a figure near the limit means heat, age or both.
• Diastase activity measures an enzyme naturally present in honey. Its significance here is simply that it declines predictably with heating and long storage, which makes it a laboratory freshness marker — nothing more. UK law requires at least 8 on the Schade scale, with a lower floor of 3 for naturally low-enzyme honeys such as citrus, provided HMF is no more than 15 mg/kg.

Fig. I · A ceiling and a floorDiagram

HMF

Hydroxymethylfurfural · mg/kg

Ceiling

Legal maximum

04080

Direction

Rises with heating and age

Close to zero is what freshly extracted, gently handled honey shows; near the limit means heat, age or both. The dashed rule at 80 is the maximum for honey of declared tropical origin.

Per batchmg/kg

Blank — no THYMELIA batch exists yet

Diastase activity

Schade scale

Floor

Legal minimum

038

Direction

Falls with heating and long storage

A laboratory freshness marker — nothing more. The dashed rule at 3 is the lower floor for naturally low-enzyme honeys such as citrus, where HMF is no more than 15 mg/kg.

Per batchSchade

Blank — no THYMELIA batch exists yet

Within the limitWithin a named exception onlyOutside every limitLegal thresholdException threshold

Blank by design. Both figures will be published for every batch, from the first harvest onwards. Nothing is on sale yet.

Two things follow. First, these limits bind all honey sold in the UK, raw or not. Second, because every harvest differs, a raw claim is only checkable per batch: a producer who publishes HMF and diastase figures against each batch number is showing you the evidence, one who does not asks you to take the word on trust — the same word the tribunal accepted in Odysea only because it came with evidence.

Why does raw honey crystallise sooner?

Because nothing has been done to stop it. Glucose crystallises around solid particles such as pollen grains, and unheated, merely strained honey keeps those particles, so it sets sooner; how soon depends on the nectar source. Heating delays crystallisation and fine filtration removes many of the particles, which is why heavily processed honey stays pourable for longer. Crystallisation is a physical change, not a fault, and gentle warming reverses it; our crystallised honey guide covers why different honeys set at different speeds and how to soften a set jar without pushing its HMF up.

What should you ask before buying raw honey?

• Ask for the batch figures. A certificate of analysis tied to the batch number on the jar — showing HMF, diastase activity and moisture, with the laboratory and date — is the difference between a description and a claim you can check. Our testing page sets out what we will publish per batch.
• Ask how it was handled. Was it heated at any point, and to what temperature? Strained or fine-filtered? A producer doing this properly can answer in a sentence.
• Ask where it is from. Region and harvest, not just where it was packed — and pollen analysis can verify a stated origin only if the pollen is still there.
• Discount the word “pure”. Under the 2015 Regulations nothing may be added to any product sold as honey, so every lawful jar is “pure” by definition; the word carries no information. “Unpasteurised” and “unfiltered” are narrower descriptions and closer to checkable.
• Keep comparisons straight. If you are weighing raw honey against manuka, those are different questions about different labels — see raw honey vs manuka.

Our claims policy is set out in full on our evidence page: composition and process only.

Who should not eat raw honey?

Honey of any kind — raw or pasteurised — is not suitable for infants under 12 months. The NHS advice is not to give honey to a child until they are over one year old, because honey can occasionally contain bacteria that produce toxins in a baby’s intestines, causing infant botulism, a serious illness.

Bee products, including honey, are also allergens for some people. That is a fact about the product category, and it is stated here as one.

When will THYMELIA sell honey?

THYMELIA is a UK brand for raw Cretan thyme honey and bee products from the Chania region of western Crete. There, wild thyme flowers from May to July, and our honey will be extracted once, as the bloom closes — more on the honey itself in our thyme honey guide. Our raw standard is the one this guide describes, to be held and published per batch — HMF at most 40 mg/kg and diastase activity at least 8 Schade units, for every batch, from the first harvest — and the word raw will not appear on a label until the batch figures are published. We have no shop yet, and we are not naming a date for one. Until then, the honest work is guides like this one: how we source is at sourcing, and what we will test is at testing.