At the Bee Yard:
USDA certified Organic honey comes from certified beekeeping and extraction operations. Hives have all of their parts (supers, queen excluders, etc.) numbered to prevent accidental use in non-organic hives. All hive parts are made of wood. Comb foundations are made from organic beeswax.
Feeding of bees is prohibited. If feeding is necessary to prevent starvation, the honey produced cannot be certified organic.
Honey is produced from naturally foraging bee colonies that are located at least 2 miles (straight-line flight) from any source of pesticide or herbicide contamination, such as non-organic crops. Due to this requirement, there are few to no commercially available quantities of USDA certified Organic honey produced in the United States.
At the Packer:
Dutch Gold and McLure’s are certified by Pennsylvania Certified Organic (PCO) who inspects our facilities to the standards established by of USDA National Organic Program (NOP). Dutch Gold only accepts honey from areas that are certified organic by an NOP approved certifier; furthermore, the certifier must have physically visited the organic producing area.
All organic honey is stored in a segregated area to prevent co-mingling organic and non-organic product.
Organic honey is only processed after all equipment has been completely flushed with hot water and PCO approved sanitizers. The system is then flushed with fresh water. All equipment is completely clean and empty of all prior honey. All labels must be approved by PCO before they go into production.
Dutch Gold Honey must be able to track 100% of the organic honey; this is inspected yearly by organic inspectors.