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Regardless of the possibility that the bees may have foraged in a non-organic crop, honeybees are remarkable efficient at filtering most possible contaminants out of the honey. Most chemical contaminants, even if they make it into the plants’ nectar, are filtered out by the honeybee and not expressed into the honey. We have dozens to hundreds of laboratory tests evidencing this.

Our bulk honey, like honey from any other honey producer supplying honey packaging companies (remember that we are beekeepers first and that the majority of honey produced on our farm is sold in bulk to other brands that blend it to raise the quality of their product), is routinely tested by third party laboratories as a condition of sale to the packaging company. Our retail Wendell Estate Honey, the finest honey our bees produce in a season, has been tested repeatedly as we export it and enter it into honey quality contests. These tests measure contaminants such as herbicide and pesticide residues, a long list of antibiotics and adulteration with sugar syrups in addition to heavy metals. The results always show that our honey is as clean and pure as any organic honey out there: completely free from pesticides, antibiotics, heavy metals, and sugar syrups.

Organic certification, if legitimate, means that the chance that there is an added contaminant like a pesticide, antibiotic, heavy metal, or syrups of processed sugars in the honey is decreased compared to non-organic honey. The chance of added harmful substances in the honey is lower with authentic organic certification. The actual health benefits (as contrasted with the harms of chemical contaminants) of organic honey are similar to the health benefits  of non-oganically-certified honey. These health benefits depend on the contents of the honey which in turn are determined by the floral source, enzymes that the bees add while working nectar into honey, and beekeeping practices. Raw non-organic honey indisputable confers more health benefits than pasteurized, processed organic honey. Like any honey, processed, pasteurized organic honey has decreased levels of healthy enzymes, flavonoids and polyphenols, reduced by the heating of pasteurization.

Organic certification of honey depends on the agricultural management of circular area, called a buffer zone, of more than 28 km² (>10 square miles) centered on the beehives. Up to 54 “quarter-section” fields may be wholly or partially within this buffer zone. These fields are managed by up to dozens of different farmers, companies and/or landowners. If even one of these land managers uses a proscribed substance like a pesticide or herbicide or other proscribed chemical, or seeds a GMO crop on even a single field within the buffer zone, all of the honey produced by that bee yard is excluded from legitimate organic certification. Towns, villages, golf courses and parks all routinely use substances that would preclude legitimate organic certification of honey produced by bees located within 3km (1.8 miles). The commendable motivation for purchasing organic foods to support more environmentally favorable agricultural practices has decreased effect in the case of buying organic honey.

Many of these countries are not known for rigorous, transparent, fair government certification agencies. However both COR and USDA recognize organic certifications from many other countries. On the commodity market, the price of bulk “organic” honey imported from countries such as Brazil, Mexico and India, the source of much of North America’s organic honey, is lower than the price of non-organic honey produced in North America. Brands buy this cheap, foreign-certified organic honey, import it in bulk, blend and package it domestically and the label it (usually legitimately by current CFIA and USDA regulations) as “USDA Organic” or “COR Organic”.

These private organic certifying agencies are mandated to base certification on COR regulations. But being for independent for-profit companies, there’s a conflicting incentive for them to certify more producers as organic to increase revenue from certifying fees. The Canadian certifying agencies operate at different levels of rigor. As industry insiders we are well aware of some honey producers that have suspicious organic certification. Wendell Estate Honey could almost certainly likewise obtain organic certification for some of our honey produced on Wendell Honey farm and sold as Wendell Estate Honey. However, we don’t believe that it is worth the effort given our operation and the fact that we can fail legitimate certification no matter what we do if a landowner seeds the wrong crop or uses chemicals on any field within 3km of our bee yards (apiaries). We could also likely get certified anyway by one of the less rigorous certifying agencies, like others appear to have done, but in the interests of integrity, we refuse to pursue this.

Were we to get COR organic certification, we could get USDA certification based on the fact that the USDA recognizes COR certification, even though the USDA has no formal guidelines for certification of domestic honey produced by American beekeepers. Again, in the interests of integrity, we refuse to go down this path to obtain USDA-Organic certification.