I’ve used flow hives for several years now just for my own use and gifts for friends and relatives. People often comment (sometimes with a hint of suspicion) that my honey is so clear and light coloured compared to others. Of course after enjoying it they love it. My question is about the clarity and I’m wondering if it’s a characteristic of the flow hive process that doesn’t require scraping and spinning or is it more characteristic of the flora in my area. I live on a river, surrounded by farms, at least one grows alfalfa and there are two others that are organic vegetable farms. I check the moisture content and keep it around 18 - 19 percent. I often don’t even feel the need to filter.
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I would vote for that - flora in your area. I have Flow frame honey of varying clarity depending on the season and the weather. I don’t think that it is related to the Flow frames, although I do think that they make extraction a whole lot easier!
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Hi Ron,
Yes the extraction process does mean that Flow honey is known for its clarity.
The colour etc. of course will depend on your local nectar sources, but the clarity is typical of Flow hive honey which tends to be relatively free of wax and debris. The very light colour of your honey will be related to the nectar source - alfalfa is one of the lightest honeys in both colour and flavour.
We don’t filter either - there seems to be no need 
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Hi Ron,
Beautiful honey!
There has actually been a paper written on this that I recommend reading.
Sensory descriptive profiling of FlowTM honey compared to honey extracted using conventional methods
In a nutshell, yes, Flow honey can be argued to be purer due to the more gentle and unprocessed harvesting approach compared to conventional methods.
I know of multiple boutique honey operators selling their Flow honey at a premium due to this positive feature (which incidentally has also meant they’ve increased their price due to high demand). Pristine conditions can also be highly considered for ‘perfect’ honey such as locations free from agriculture, chemicals, damaged waterways, etc.
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Very interesting study.
It didn’t say that flow honey was distinguishable from conventional methods by taste/appearance. In fact, what it called backyard production (small scale beekeeper using an conventional extractor) and flow samples were broadly identical.
It did note however that there were several significant organoleptic differences between both flow and backyard honey compared to semi-commercial production.
The lesson seems to be that small scale production makes better honey
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The clarity is exceptional compared to spun honey from my own personal experience.
Time of year definitely sees a change in colour intensity but clarity is still much better than spun.
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Thanks for that link, that is pretty interesting!
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