Honey and Bees

Honey

Honey is a sweet and viscous fluid produced by honey bees (and some other species), and derived from the nectar of flowers. According to the United States National Honey Board and various international food regulations, "honey stipulates a pure product that does not allow for the addition of any other substance… this includes, but is not limited to, water or other sweeteners". This article refers exclusively to the honey produced by honey bees (the genus Apis); honey produced by other bees or other insects has very different properties.

Honey has a similar composition to granulated sugar (50% fructose and 44% glucose) and approximately the same relative sweetness (97% of the sweetness of sucrose). Honey has attractive chemical properties for baking, and a distinctive flavor which leads some people to prefer it over sugar and other sweeteners.

Most micro-organisms do not grow in honey because of its low water activity of 0.6. However, it is important to note that honey frequently contains dormant endospores of the bacteria Clostridium botulinum, which can be dangerous to infants as the endospores can transform into toxin-producing bacteria in the infant's immature intestinal tract, leading to illness and even death.

The study of pollens and spores in raw honey (melissopalynology) can determine floral sources of honey. Because bees carry an electrostatic charge, and can attract other particles, the same techniques of melissopalynology can be used in area environmental studies of radioactive particles, dust, or particulate pollution. A main effect of bees collecting nectar to make honey is pollination, which is crucial for flowering plants.

The beekeeper encourages overproduction of honey within the hive so that the excess can be taken without endangering the bees. When sources of foods for the bees are short the beekeeper may have to give the bees supplementary nutrition.

Honey Formation

Honey is laid down by bees as a food source. In cold weather or when food sources are scarce, bees use their stored honey as their source of energy. By contriving for the bee swarm to make its home in a hive, people have been able to semi-domesticate the insects. In the hive there are three types of bee: the single queen bee, a seasonally variable number of drone bees to fertilize new queens, and some 20,000 to 40,000 worker bees. The worker bees raise larvae and collect the nectar that will become honey in the hive. They go out, collect the sugar-rich flower nectar and return to the hive. As they leave the flower, bees release Nasonov pheromones. These enable other bees to find their way to the site by smell. Honeybees also release Nasonov pheromones at the entrance to the hive, which enables returning bees to return to the proper hive. In the hive the bees use their "honey stomachs" to ingest and regurgitate the nectar a number of times until it is partially digested. It is then stored in the honeycomb. Nectar is high in both water content and natural yeasts which, unchecked, would cause the sugars in the nectar to ferment. After the final regurgitation, the honeycomb is left unsealed. Bees inside the hive fan their wings, creating a strong draft across the honeycomb which enhances evaporation of much of the water from the nectar. The reduction in water content, which raises the sugar concentration, prevents fermentation. Ripe honey, as removed from the hive by the beekeeper, has a long shelf life and will not ferment.

Honey Types

Blended; Most commercially available honey is blended, meaning that it is a mixture of two or more honeys differing in floral source, color, flavor, density or geographic origin.

Polyfloral; Polyfloral honey is derived from the nectar of many types of flowers.

Monofloral honey; Different monofloral honeys have a distinctive flavor and colour due to differences between their principal nectar sources. Beekeepers keep monofloral beehives in an area where the bees have access to only one type of flower, because of that flower's properties. In practice, because of the difficulties in containing bees, a small proportion of any honey will be from additional nectar from other flower types.

Honeydew honey; Instead of taking nectar, bees can take honeydew, the sweet secretions of aphids or other plant sap-sucking insects. Bees collecting this resource have to be fed protein supplements, as honeydew lacks the protein-rich pollen accompaniment gathered from flowers. Honeydew honey is popular in some areas, but in many areas beekeepers have difficulty selling the stronger flavored product. Honeydew honey has a much larger proportion of indigestibles than light floral honeys, which can cause dysentery, resulting in the death of colonies in areas with cold winters. Good beekeeping management requires the removal of honeydew prior to winter in colder areas.

Honey Processed

Comb honey; Honey sold still in the original bees' wax comb. Comb honey was once packaged by installing a wooden framework in special honey supers.

Certified Organic Honey; according to theorganicreport.com, organic honey is quite scarce to find because most beekeepers "routinely use sulfa compounds and antibiotics to control bee diseases, carbolic acid to remove honey from the hive, and calcium cyanide to kill colonies before extracting the honey, not to mention that conventional honeybees gather nectar from plants that have been sprayed with pesticides." http://www.theorganicreport.com/pages/461_organic_honey.cfm

Raw honey; Honey as it exists in the beehive or as obtained by extraction, settling or straining without adding heat above 120 °F. Raw honey contains some pollen and may contain small particles of wax. Local raw honey is sought after by allergy sufferers as the pollen impurities are thought to lessen the sensitivity to hay fever.

Chunk honey; Honey packed in widemouth containers consisting of one or more pieces of comb honey surrounded by extracted liquid honey. Strained honey or Honey which has been passed through a mesh material to remove particulate material (pieces of wax, propolis, other defects) without removing pollen, minerals or valuable enzymes. Preferred by the health food trade — it may have a cloudy appearance due to the included pollen, and it also tends to crystallize more quickly than ultrafiltered honey.

Ultrafiltered honey; Honey processed by very fine filtration under high pressure to remove all extraneous solids and pollen grains. The process typically heats honey to 150-170 °F to more easily pass through the fine filter. Ultrafiltered honey is very clear and has a longer shelf life, because it crystallizes more slowly due to the high temperatures breaking down any sugar seed crystals, making it preferred by the supermarket trade. Ultrafiltration eliminates nutritionally valuable enzymes, such as diastase and invertase.

Heat-Treated honey; Heat-treatment after extraction reduces the moisture level and destroys yeast cells. Heating liquefies crystals in the honey, too. Heat-exposure also results in product deterioration, as it increases the level of hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) and reduces enzyme (e.g. diastase) activity. The heat also affects sensory qualities and reduces the freshness. Heat processing can darken the natural honey color (browning), too.

Ultrasonicated honey; Ultrasonication is a non-thermal processing alternative for honey. When honey is exposed to ultrasonication, most of the yeast cells are destroyed. Yeast cells that survive sonication generally lose their ability to grow. This reduces the rate of honey fermentation substantially. Ultrasonication also eliminates existing crystals and inhibit further crystallization in honey. Ultrasonically aided liquefaction can work at substantially lower temperatures of approx. 35 °C and can reduce liquefaction time to less than 30 seconds.

Distinguishing quality honey

The high quality natural honey can be distinguished by its fragrance and taste. The best period to stock up on honey is in summer, when it is being collected in large quantities. The ripe, freshly collected, high quality honey at 20°C (68°F) flows from the knife in a straight squirt, without breaking into separate drops. After falling down the honey should form a clear hillock. A saying goes: “the honey rustles and glues like viscose”. The ripe honey is being collected from the sealed honey combs, therefore it should always be of high quality.

The honey should not lay down in layers. If this is a case, it indicates the excessive humidity (over 20%) of the product, and such a honey would not be suitable for long term preservation.

A fluffy thin layer on the surface of the honey (like a white foam), or marble-coloured and white spots in crystallized honey at the wallsides of the bottle are caused by filling of liquid honey with subsequent sealing—the air bubbles are surfacing and part of them is concentrated at the wallsides. This is an indication of a high quality honey, which was filled without pasteurization (heating).

If the honey is transparent, burning with amber-like colours, then (unless it is very fresh) it has most likely been heated and is of little value. Transparent and reluctant to thicken honey can also indicate its being a result of feeding the bees with sugar syrup or even sugar itself, which is bad both for the bees and for the honey they produce, as naturally they are supposed to feed on flower nectar.

A true honey that is at least one month old is usually of demure (not translucent) colours.

Nutrition

Honey is a mixture of sugars and other compounds. With respect to carbohydrates, honey is mainly fructose (about 38.5%) and glucose (about 31.0%), making it similar to the synthetically produced inverted sugar syrup which is approximately 48% fructose, 47% glucose, and 5% sucrose. Honey's remaining carbohydrates include maltose, sucrose, and other complex carbohydrates.

Honey contains trace amounts of several vitamins and minerals. As with all nutritive sweeteners, honey is mostly sugars and is not a significant source of vitamins or minerals.

Honey also contains tiny amounts of several compounds thought to function as antioxidants, including chrysin, pinobanksin, vitamin C, catalase, and pinocembrin.

The specific composition of any batch of honey will depend largely on the mix of flowers available to the bees that produced the honey. Honey has a density of about 1.36 kg/liter (40% denser than water).

A typical honey analysis is as follows;

Fructose: 38.0%
Glucose: 31.0%
Sucrose: 1.0%
Water: 17.0%
Other sugars: 9.0% (maltose, melezitose)
Ash: 0.17%
Other: 3.38%
The analysis of the sugar content of honey is used for detecting adulteration