Because our honey is raw, the bits of pollen that are naturally found within the honey can trigger the sugars to start binding to each other to form crystals. This is a similar process to how rock candy is made.

If your honey crystallizes, it is still safe to eat and remains delicious!

But if you don’t like crystallized honey, there are easy methods that you can use to change it back to its liquid state. We recommend submerging the entire glass jar in a hot water bath. By doing this, the honey will slowly de-crystallize without destroying the beneficial qualities of raw honey and be good as new! However, heating the honey too high should be avoided, as it destroys the enzymes and nutrients, so use discretion and try not to heat the honey hotter than needed.

As the weather temperatures start to drop, you may find that your jar of raw honey is crystallizing faster than usual. Crystallization of raw honey can be affected by temperature, so during the colder months, people find that their honey may crystallize faster. Honey bees maintain their colonies above 90F throughout the year, so most honey varieties will not crystallize within the colonies, even during the wintertime.

Raw honey is unpasteurized and straight from the hive. It is often lightly strained to remove any extraneous objects such as wax cappings. Raw honey contains natural enzymes, pollen, and yeasts which are produced by the flowers the bees forage on within their environment. Many prefer raw honey to pasteurized honey due to the health perks it offers.

Pasteurized honey begins as raw honey, but is finely filtered and heated to a high temperature to remove any enzymes, pollen, and yeasts found within the honey. Pollen is removed from raw honey to prevent crystallization which makes it more visually appealing on grocery store shelves.

YES!

Raw honey is perfectly safe and healthy, though not recommended for infants or young children. All of our honey is below 18% water content so it will never go bad or ferment.

Raw honey isn't pasteurized.

Pasteurization removes all the pollen from the honey, and kills most enzymes, including diastase (amylase), invertase and glucose oxidase. The heat from pasteurization also damages many of the vitamins and minerals commonly found in natural honey.

We sure do! 

We offer a jar exchange program on our 8 ounce and 48 ounce glass jars. In return for our jar with our apiary label, $1.00 will be discounted from your same-day purchase of honey and/or bee pollen. Multiple jar returns are gladly accepted. You can return your jars to us at our self-serve honey shop, at Chapel Hill Farmers’ Market, at South Durham Farmers’ Market, and at Holly Springs Farmers' Market.

All orders are processed within 5 to 8 business days. If we are experiencing a high volume of orders, shipments may be delayed by a few days. Please allow additional days in transit for delivery. Orders are not shipped or delivered on weekends or holidays.

We work hard to get orders to you on time. It's just the two of us - we care for the bees, we harvest the honey, we fill the honey jars, we hand-label the jars, we make the candles, we pack the orders, and we take the orders to the post office.

Absolutely!

Select "Pickup at King Cobra Apiary" during checkout. The turnaround time for an order is 2 to 5 days. We will notify you by the email you provided during checkout when your order is ready for pickup. Your order will be ready for pickup in our self-serve honey shop which is located to the right of the driveway at 5955 Thom Road, Mebane, NC 27302.

Yes!

Select "Pickup at Chapel Hill Farmers' Market," "Pickup at South Durham Farmers' Market,” or "Pickup at Holly Springs Farmers' Market" during checkout. Your order will be ready for pickup at market the Saturday after you make your order if we are at the market that weekend (please check our schedule or email us.) We will notify you by email when your order is ready for pickup. The cutoff time for pickup orders is 5pm on the Friday before market.

We follow best practices for bee health, including regular inspections, disease monitoring, and seasonal migrations from North Carolina to southern Georgia for overwintering, queen rearing, and nuc production. As a USDA-registered commercial beekeeping operation, we follow USDA rules and regulations closely. Our hives are also inspected each year by the NCDA&CS to check for diseases and the overall quality of the bees.

We use integrated pest management techniques, including treatments and regular hive inspections, to minimize the impact of pests and diseases on our colonies.

We keep our beehives in Orange and Alamance Counties, located in North Carolina’s Piedmont region, where we also produce our honey and other apiary products.

For safety and logistical reasons, we do not offer public tours of our farm or apiary sites.

Yes, we carefully transport our bees between Georgia and North Carolina in the wintertime as part of a seasonal management plan that supports bee health, queen rearing, and nuc production. Taking our hives to southern Georgia ensures that we have the strongest honey bee populations possible within our colonies when we bring them back right before the spring honey flow starts in North Carolina. Strong colonies = high honey production yields.

Yes, we sell 5-frame nucs, which are available for preorder on our website starting in December every year. Orders are typically fulfilled in April after passing state inspections to ensure healthy, strong colonies. We do not sell packages.

Yes, farm pickup is available for online preorders for nucs through our website. After ordering, we will schedule your pickup date and time for April or May via email.

No, we do not sell queens separately. We only include queens in our 5-frame nucs.

Yes, we offer large-scale professional pollination services to full-time blueberry, watermelon, and apple growers in North Carolina and Virginia. Please contact us via email or by phone for availability and pricing.