HONEY When people decide to become farmers, usually rows and rows of corn or wheat comes into mind. When two city folks who really don't know how to grow sprouts, much less crops, decide to become farmers, our thoughts turned to bees. Here was our thought process: We work constantly, typing away and emailing furiously at all hours, must be organized and must be productive - what can we relate to? Honey bees! Along with our creative idea, basic training was required and as newly minted apiarists, we took all manners of courses and educated ourselves through conferences and workshops to really understand what bees needed to be healthy and productive on our land. Persing Woods raises Russian hybrid bees precisely because they are (as we consider them to be) the "best in breed." Fastidious about pest control - they will pick off those horrible verroa mites off of one another - and hardy against the cold long winters here in Upstate New York, the bees require only the proper fundamentals: Good housing and Good food. Each bee hive is constructed from natural materials and coated in propolis, an antimicrobial sealant made directly by the bees, instead of the paint and other toxic materials used by other producers. Persing Woods harvests only 50% of the total honey produced by each hive. Bees that live on this rich, beneficial diet are healthy and rarely require human interference. We at Persing Woods, also spend the time to carefully extract the rich honey from the comb by letting it drip into our buckets and skim the wax and pollen off the surface multiple times. The result: an intense, smooth flowing ambrosia produced by our happy, healthy bees from the flowering Japanese bamboo plant on our pesticide free property. We do not cook the honey. Raw honey contains the nutrient and enzyme benefits that are usually eliminated in pasteurization, and consuming local raw honey has shown to alleviate some allergy symptoms. Honey, as a natural anti-bacterial humectant, is also a wonderful moisturizer for the skin. We offer two types of honey at Persing Woods: Raw Také Honey, which contains a higher percentage of the Japanese Bamboo nectar, and Raw Wild Honey. Our honey is 100% raw, organic, unheated, and naturally filtered