This may be a little off topic, but what exactly constitutes "processing"?
When I think of as processing, I think of heat, high pressure and filters. Much different than extracting and bottling:
Honey often gets contaminated with bee-wax, dust and atmospheric materials. Honey is a perishable product in the sense that its quality deteriorates, as it is a biological product. Fermentation occurs in honey under certain circumstances due to presence of yeast which spoil honey. Hygienic precautions, therefore, are necessary while handling honey from time to time right from the stage it is extracted.
Honey has a tendency to absorb atmospheric materials i.e. dust, moisture etc. if kept open to atmosphere. Therefore it becomes moral obligation to supply honey in natural form as far as possible and for this it is necessary to process honey for removing foreign particles, destroy yeast and remove/reduce extra wax, moisture and bacteria's to desired level to prevent fermentation, so that it could be acceptable to ever conscious in local and export market.
Honey contains pollen, the dust and air bubbles, which tend to induce crystallization. The crystallization can be retarded by heating honey to 45 C to dissolve crystals present in honey. Filtration then removes part of pollen, foreign particles and wax. To prevent fermentation and to destroy yeast, honey is heated to 60-65 C for specific time period. Proper temperature control and heating time is most important factor in processing of honey.
The processing of honey is divided into three steps.
a) Filtration to remove wax, foreign particles after heating honey to 45 C.
b) Honey than heated to 60-65 C for 10-15 minutes for destroying yeast and other bacteria.
c) Cooling the honey to atmospheric temperature and storing in closed vessel for 24-48 hrs. to allow air bubbles to go up and then packed and sealed immediately.
