Two words sit on most honey labels and quietly do most of the work: filtered and raw. They sound technical but mean very different things in practice. One is a small, almost invisible step in a careful bottling line. The other is a process that strips much of what makes raw honey raw. If you have ever wondered why one jar looks crystal-clear and another holds a soft, living haze, this is where the difference comes from.
This post is a plain look at honey filtering vs straining: what each step actually does, what it removes, what it keeps, and how to read a label without guessing. We will use the Raw Filtered Marjoram Honey — Hive 3, Fayoum — 800g as a working example, because it sits exactly on the line between the two and explains it more clearly than any diagram could.
Straining: The Old, Quiet Step
Straining is the first thing that happens to honey after it leaves the comb. The beekeeper, or the bottling team, pours the honey through a coarse mesh — usually stainless steel, sometimes a clean food-grade cloth. The mesh catches the obvious things: small pieces of beeswax, the occasional bee leg, a fragment of propolis, a piece of the comb cap that broke off during uncapping.
That is all straining is. It removes the things you can see and feel between your fingers. It does not warm the honey beyond the temperature of a comfortable kitchen, and it does not push the honey through anything fine enough to change its character. After straining, the honey still carries its natural water content, its pollen, its tiny wax granules, and its full aroma. It still crystallises in its own time. It is, in every meaningful sense, still raw.
Most small Egyptian apiaries strain. We strain. It is the minimum step that turns honey from "fresh from the hive" into "ready for a jar" without changing what the bees actually made.
Filtering: A Finer Mesh, A Different Purpose
Filtering is a quieter word for a more involved step. The honey is passed through a mesh small enough to catch much smaller particles — fine wax dust, larger pollen grains, sometimes air bubbles that would otherwise settle out over weeks. There are two kinds of filtering worth naming, and the difference matters.
The first is cold, gentle filtering. The honey is not heated; it is passed slowly through a fine but not ultra-fine mesh, usually at room temperature or just slightly above. It removes the very smallest visible particles — the haze that some people prefer not to see — without stripping the honey of its pollen profile or its aroma. This is the filtering we do on certain jars where the customer prefers a clearer presentation. The honey remains raw. It still crystallises. It still tells you, when you taste it, where it came from.
The second is hot, fine filtering, often called ultra-filtration. The honey is warmed past its natural temperature — sometimes to 60°C or higher — so it flows easily, and then pushed through a very fine industrial filter. This step removes pollen almost entirely, removes the natural texture, and quietly removes the marker that lets a lab trace the honey back to its origin. Most large supermarket honey has been through this. It is shelf-stable, perfectly clear, and almost untraceable. We do not do this. We are explicit about that because it is the line we will not cross.
Reading the Label Without Guessing
Here is the short version of how to read a honey label honestly:
- "Raw, unfiltered" — strained only. Likely cloudy, with visible pollen and wax. Will crystallise. Aroma is at full volume.
- "Raw, filtered" — strained, then cold-filtered through a fine mesh. Clearer than unfiltered, still raw, still carries its pollen profile and aroma. Will still crystallise.
- "Pasteurised" — heated to a temperature that kills natural yeasts and slows crystallisation. Smoother to pour, but no longer raw in the way bees made it.
- "Pure honey" with no other word — almost always means ultra-filtered and often heated. Clear, shelf-stable, traceability gone. Pretty in a jar; thin in character.
If a label does not say which of these it is, the safer assumption is the last one. Honey that has been carefully strained and gently filtered is honey a producer is proud to describe in detail. Honey that has been ultra-processed tends to hide behind a single confident word.
The Marjoram Jar as a Working Example
The Raw Filtered Marjoram Honey — Hive 3, Fayoum — 800g is filtered in the first sense — cold, gentle, fine but not ultra. The honey comes from Hive 3 in a Fayoum apiary, where the bees forage on marjoram bloom in late spring. After it leaves the comb, it is strained for the obvious bits, then passed slowly through a fine cold mesh that takes out the haze without taking out the soul of the honey.
The result is a jar that pours clean, looks calm on the counter, and still tastes like marjoram — herbal, faintly resinous, with a long aftertaste that lingers longer than its sweetness. It still crystallises over months, especially in cool weather. It still carries its pollen. If a lab were to test it for origin tomorrow, the pollen profile would point back to Fayoum's marjoram fields. None of that was removed.
The 800g jar is the size we recommend for households that already use marjoram honey daily — a morning spoon, a stir into warm milk, a finishing drizzle on labneh or fresh white cheese. The jar lasts a household of two roughly three weeks; a family of four closer to ten days.
Why We Do Not Hide the Step
A small producer has a choice on every batch: filter or not, and if filtering, how fine. We make that choice jar by jar and put the word on the label so a customer can decide at home. Some prefer the unfiltered jar to see the pollen; others prefer the cold-filtered jar for a tidier breakfast tray. Both are honest jars. Both are still raw. Neither has been pushed through a heated industrial filter to look like something it is not.
That is the difference between the two filtering schools, and it is the difference between a label that tells the truth and a label that hides behind one word.
A Short Way to Remember It
Straining removes what you would not want in your spoon: wax, debris, the occasional bee part. Cold filtering removes the haze without removing the honey's identity. Hot, fine filtering removes the haze and the identity at the same time.
If a label is specific about its method, it is usually a label worth trusting. If a label uses only one word, ask what the word is hiding.
To try a cold-filtered marjoram honey from a Fayoum apiary we have worked with for years, the 800g Marjoram jar from Hive 3 is the one we keep returning to on our own breakfast tables. Order via WhatsApp or the website — and if you would rather start smaller, the same honey comes in a 400g jar.