Good to know · September 10, 2026 · 5 min read
How to read a honey label: what "pure," "raw," "Grade A" and "organic" really mean
Most of the words on a honey jar are either meaningless or mean something other than what you'd think. A short decoder, and the two things worth looking for.
Stand in front of the honey shelf at any grocery store and you’ll see a dozen jars all claiming something. Pure. Natural. Raw. Grade A. Organic. Local. Unfiltered. Some of those words are regulated. Most aren’t. Here is what each one does and doesn’t tell you.
“Pure honey”
This one actually means something. In the United States, a product labeled simply “honey” has to be honey, with nothing added; if sugar or syrup is mixed in, it must say so. “Pure” just restates that. It tells you nothing about where the honey came from, how it was processed, or whether it was blended from a dozen sources. Pure honey can be heated, ultra-filtered and imported from three countries.
“Raw”
Not legally defined by the FDA or the USDA. In practice it means the honey wasn’t heated much above hive temperature and wasn’t fine-filtered, so it still contains pollen and will eventually crystallize. But because nobody polices the word, some packers use it on honey that was warmed to 120°F or more. The best clue is behavior: raw honey is a little cloudy, smells of something, and sets over time. A jar that stays clear for a year probably wasn’t raw. Ours is strained, never heated, and it will crystallize; we explain the difference in Raw honey vs. regular honey.
“Grade A”
USDA honey grades exist, but they’re voluntary, and they measure things like moisture content, clarity, and the absence of defects such as foam or bits of wax. They do not measure flavor, origin, or whether the honey was heated. Nearly all commercial honey qualifies as Grade A. It’s not a mark of quality in the sense most people assume.
“Natural”
Means nothing on a honey label. All honey is natural.
“Organic”
Real, but complicated. Bees forage over a couple of miles in every direction, and there’s no way to keep them off conventionally farmed land, so the USDA has never finalized organic standards for honey produced in the United States. Almost all honey sold as USDA Organic is imported from countries with large wild areas, certified under their own rules. It’s not a scam, but it usually means the honey traveled a long way, and it says nothing about whether it was heated or blended.
“Unfiltered” versus “strained”
Unfiltered is the one you want. It means the honey wasn’t pushed through filters fine enough to remove pollen. Straining, which catches wax and bee parts through a coarse mesh, is what every beekeeper does and doesn’t count as filtering. If a label says “filtered,” the pollen is probably gone, and with it any way to trace where the honey came from.
“Local”
Not defined. It could mean the county or the country. Ask.
“Product of”
This one is worth reading. Honey has to declare its country of origin, and a label that says “Product of USA, Argentina, Vietnam” is telling you it’s a blend. That isn’t automatically bad, but blends are where most of the problems in the honey trade live, from adulteration with rice or corn syrup to honey laundered through third countries. A single country, or better, a single region, is a good sign.
The two things to look for
First, a place. Not “local,” but an actual place: a state, a region, a floral source. Honey from somewhere specific is honey someone was willing to stand behind. Second, evidence that it’s raw, which is easiest to judge by the jar itself: a bit of haze, a smell when you open it, and sooner or later crystals.
Everything else on the label is decoration. Our jars say the flower, the region, and Lake County, Illinois, where we bottle by hand. That’s the label we’d want to read.
