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A few words about our honey

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Hi, I’m Adriana. Thank you for visiting! I wanted to add a few words about our honey to give you some background.

We have created Honey Hills to bring you the most delicious, pure and rare organic honey varieties we can find anywhere in my beautiful homeland of Romania.  My husband, Phil, and I have explored the most biodiverse Carpathian Honey producing areas to find the best honey-makers who make a variety of flavours and tastes of honey that can’t be beaten in quality. They also happen to be some of the kindest people we have ever met! Our products are produced in small quantities and only sold in local markets in Romania so you won’t find them anywhere else in the UK.

Several of our honeys are made by transporting the beehives to different locations in the mountains to create their unique flavours – for example, our Forest and Raspberry honey, which is made in hives placed in an area full of wild raspberry blossom in early summer, then taken deep into the forest to add complex flavours from the pine trees.

Our honeys are made following a traditional method, with the highest respect for nature and the bees:

  •  Our bees consume their own honey
  •  We do not use antibiotics
  •  We do not use chemical repellent for the harvest
  •  We extract and package our honey without heating it and we do not blend it

Mountain Certified honey comes directly from the heart of the Carpathian Mountains where Carpathian flora establishes a great natural context for honey, and small-scale production of raw honey is a millennial tradition and way of life.  People put their hearts and souls into honey-making: they explore the mountains for the best locations for their beehives to produce the best quality honey, and the beekeepers always talk to their bees.

We also offer honey from the vast nature reserve of the Danube Delta, where the bees gather nectar from wild water mint and wetland flowers. Our Cherry blossom honey is the first of the year, which must be carefully shared with the bees as they awake from winter hibernation and is only available in small quantities. Our equally rare uncentrifuged honey is collected simply as it drips from the comb and our artisanal honey vinegar, made by only one producer, is utterly delectable!

Thanks again for visiting – if you make a purchase I guarantee you will really love it! Please read on for further information …

What is the difference between Raw Honey & ‘Normal’ Honey?

Raw honey or pure honey is extracted & bottled directly from the beehive. Raw honey can be filtered or unfiltered but the bee pollen, nutrients, and medicinal benefits of honey remain part of the final product.

‘Normal’ honey is generally honey that has been pasteurized (ie. heated to high temperatures) to make bottling it quicker and easier. This results in the loss of bee pollen, nutrients and many (if not all) of the medicinal benefits of honey. Unfortunately, large-scale producers routinely heat up and mix honey from completely different sources and dilute it with corn starch and sugars to reduce the price for consumers and make more sales. The honey flavours obtained in this way are manipulated to produce acceptable products for a mass market, and do not have the delicious subtlety of flavour or health benefits of truly natural and raw honey.

Why ‘Organic’ Honey?

Honey bees can fly over 2 miles from their hive to find pollen for food, and nectar for making honey. This means that for honey to be designated organic, the entire landscape within a 2-mile radius of the hive must be free of chemical contamination. Chemicals used in farming or finding their way into the bee foraging area via ground or surface water would render the honey non-organic, so in practice, the more isolated the hives are from farming, the better, from an organic point of view.

Because of this, truly organic honey is rare in Europe, and only the wildest places can produce it, including the vast unfarmed areas of the Carpathian mountain wilderness of Romania.

Rare, special honeys

Wild Cherry Blossom – Raw Organic Honey from the Carpathian Mountains
Discover the unique tasting experience of this honey!
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A rare honey because cherry trees blossom early in the year when the bees, still sleepy after their winter hibernation, use most of their new honey for nourishment. This makes it difficult to collect and it can only be produced in limited quantities.

This authentic Cherry Blossom Honey should not be confused with artificially flavoured or cherry-infused honey.

Taste: Delicate sweetness develops rosehip and split cherrywood undertones with well-rounded cherry fruit and an unusually long finish.

Wild Thistle Blossom – Raw Organic Honey from the Carpathian Mountains
Thistle honey is a rare honey!
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Not many people know that bees are extremely interested in thistle flowers, and use their nectar to make honey which is superior to many other mono-floral honeys, with a silky texture, fine aroma and healing properties.

Our Organic Wild Thistle Blossom Honey from the Carpathian Mountains is recognised as one of our most valuable varieties of honey.

Taste: Gentle sweetness develops into a full, perfectly rounded and warmly comforting flavour with overtones of caramel, fading to a subtly vanilla-tinged finish.

Forest and Wild Raspberry – Raw Organic Honey from the Carpathian Mountains
An exquisite, rare honey!
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With a deep caramel colour, this honey is produced from the nectar of raspberry blossom and the honeydew of fir trees found in mountainous areas where raspberries grow naturally.

This honey will appeal to all honey-lovers with its broad spectrum of flavour.

Taste: Intense sweetness explodes with tart raspberry and the subtlest hint of vanilla, settling to a deliciously warm, raspberry-leaf, finish.