When you see 'cold pressed' olive oil, you know it's of the highest quality. Think of Crushed Wholecomb Technology™ in the same way. We crush the entire honeycomb and bottle everything, other than the large chunks of beeswax. This process takes a lot longer, but we don't mind - this is what provides our customers with the highest quality, the most 'whole' food source and the best wholefood benefits.

No other Mānuka Honey brand extracts their honey in this way.

Most other brands will prick a hole in the honeycomb, heat the comb to make the honey runny, and then use centrifugal spinner to force the thin honey out of the tiny holes in the beeswax, leaving behind the thicker, more gelatinous honey that contains all the bee bread, pollen and other beneficial properties. From there, they use very fine filters to ensure that the honey they are selling is smooth.

Sometimes, to make the honey 'creamy', they will introduce a 'honey seed' additive, which is a bit like an icicle - all the liquid surrounding the initial additive repeats the same 'seed' pattern, to create a slightly textural feel, but you will notice that the texture is creamy, velvety and remains the same throughout every spoonful.

Steens Honey contains honey crystals of various sizes that melt on your tongue - that's how you know a real wholefood honey when you taste it.

Interestingly, many honey brands will claim to be selling 'raw' honey, when they are actually selling honey that has been heated to temperatures above those that occur naturally in the hive at some point in their extraction or packing process.

Read carefully when following a brand - do they tell you that they dont heat during extraction, but they leave out the packing part? Or vice versa?

We do not heat our honey above naturally occurring hive temperatures at ANY stage - neither extraction, nor packing, keeping natural enzymes intact.