Honey

Honey is a sweet and viscous substance made by bees, especially honey bees. Bees make honey to feed their colonies. They collect and change sugary plant nectar or insect secretions like the honeydew from aphids. This makes the honey thick and last a long time.

Honey is stored in structures called honeycomb, made of wax with hexagonal cells. While honey bees use honeycomb, other bees, such as the stingless bee, store honey in pots made from wax and resin. People get honey from wild bees or from domesticated bee hives. The practice of raising bees for honey is called beekeeping or apiculture. Cultivating stingless bees is called meliponiculture.

Honey is sweet because it has a lot of the sugars fructose and glucose. It has similar sweetness to sucrose, or table sugar. A single tablespoon of honey gives about 180 kilojoules (43 kilocalories) of food energy. Because of its high sugar and acidic pH, honey stops many microorganisms from growing. When stored well, honey does not spoil.

People have used honey since prehistoric times. Cave paintings in Cuevas de la Araña in Spain show people collecting honey over 8,000 years ago. The common honey bee Apis mellifera came from the Old World. Many Mayans in the New World have also kept stingless bees since pre-Columbian times.

Formation

Honey is made by bees who collect nectar or honeydew. Bees need honey for energy, especially when they fly to find food or prepare for winter. When bees gather nectar, they also use some of it to help them fly. Most of the nectar they collect is changed into honey inside the hive. Other bees help by mixing it and removing water.

Beetles collect nectar or honeydew and bring it back to the hive. Inside the hive, bees mix the nectar and let it dry out by moving air over it. This removes water and turns the nectar into thick honey. The bees then store the honey in special honeycomb cells and cover it with wax to keep it safe. Honey can last a very long time because its low water content stops harmful germs from growing.

By other insects

Honey bees are not the only insects that make honey. Many types of bumblebees and some wasps also produce honey. These insects collect nectar and change it into honey to use as food.

Human intervention

People have helped bees by giving them places to live, like special boxes called Langstroth hives. When bees are ready to start a new group, or "swarm", people can catch them and put them in these boxes. The bees then stay in one place and make honey that people can collect. Even though bees can leave at any time, people work hard to keep them in these boxes by giving them more space to build their honeycomb. This way, people get honey, pollen, wax, and other useful materials from the bees.

Production

Honey comes from bees, either from wild groups or from farms where bees are kept. A hive usually makes about 29 kilograms (65 lb) of honey each year. Beekeepers use a bee smoker to make the bees calm before taking the honeycomb out. The honey is then taken out and cleaned to get rid of any beeswax or dirt.

Honey can be kept for a very long time because of its natural qualities. It lasts a long time due to an enzyme in bees that helps stop bacteria from growing. This makes honey safe to eat even after many years.

Adulteration

Honey is sometimes mixed with other sugars or syrups. People do this to change the taste, make the honey less thick, or save money. This has happened since ancient times. People used syrups from plants like maple, birch, or sorghum. Today, corn syrup is often added. This makes it hard to know if honey is pure.

Rules from the Codex Alimentarius of the United Nations say that honey sold as “pure” should not have these extra sugars. Different countries have different rules about how honey is labeled. Special science methods help find out if honey has been mixed with other sugars.

Modern uses

Main article: Mellivory

Honey has been a popular food for thousands of years. People use honey for cooking, baking, and desserts. It is also a sweet spread for bread. Honey tastes great in drinks like tea and some special drinks.

One of the oldest drinks in the world is mead. Mead is made by mixing honey with yeast. There are many kinds of mead. Some have spices, like metheglin. Others have fruit juices, like melomel. And some have cinnamon, like hippocras. These drinks show how useful honey can be.

Physical and chemical properties

The way honey looks and feels changes based on its water, the flowers bees used, temperature, and the sugars it has. Fresh honey is a thick liquid with more sugar than water can normally hold. At room temperature, honey can turn into solid bits of sugar mixed in a liquid.

Honey’s density is usually between 1.38 and 1.45 kg/L at 20 °C. Honey melts between 40 and 50 °C, depending on its makeup. Below this temperature, honey can stay the same or turn into solid bits, based on the amount of sugar in it. Different types of honey turn into solid bits at different speeds. Honey can become thick when cooled but doesn’t freeze until very cold temperatures. It can even turn into a glassy solid below -42 °C.

Main article: Phase transitions

How honey flows, or its viscosity, depends on temperature and water. More water makes honey flow more easily. Honey with 14% water flows about 400 poise at 25 °C, while honey with 20% water flows around 20 poise. As honey cools, it flows more slowly. Honey also sticks well because it has low surface tension. Most honey acts like a normal liquid, but some types, like heather or mānuka honey, can become thick when still but turn liquid when stirred.

Honey can carry electricity because it has tiny parts like acids and minerals. How well it carries electricity helps tell its quality. Honey can also bend light, which helps identify its type and quality. Honey can take in water from the air, so it must be kept in sealed containers. If honey takes in too much water, it can spoil. To stop this, honey for long-term storage is often pasteurized by heating it to remove yeast.

When heated, honey can turn darker and burn. It contains sugar that turns dark at lower temperatures. Honey also has acids that help it change color and taste. Honey does not heat up well, so melting solid bits can cause uneven heating if not done carefully.

Main article: Thermal characteristics

Honey is acidic, with a pH between 3.4 and 6.1. It has many types of acids that affect its taste. The most common acid is gluconic acid, made when bees change sugar.

Different flowers give honey over 100 types of compounds that decide its flavors and smells. These compounds come from the flowers, the bees, or reactions in the honey. They can change over time and with temperature. These compounds give honey tastes like “sweet”, “flowery”, “citrus”, or “almond”, and help tell where the honey came from and which bees made it.

Main articles: Volatile organic compounds , Flavors , Aromas

Classification

Honey is grouped by where it comes from and how it is made and sold. One way to group honey is by the flowers or plants whose nectar the bees used to make it. This is called the plant source. For example, monofloral honey comes from one type of flower, like clover or orange blossom. It has a special flavor and color. Polyfloral honey, also called wildflower honey, comes from many kinds of flowers. It can taste different each year.

Honey can also be grouped by how it is packed and treated. Most honey is sold as a liquid, but it can be found in other forms too. Crystallized honey turns grainy when some of the sugar changes form. Pasteurized honey is gently heated to remove yeast and keep it fresh. Raw honey is not heated at all and keeps more of the pollen and natural bits from the bees’ hive. Other types include filtered honey, which is very clear, and creamed honey, which is smooth and spreadable. There is also comb honey, sold in the bees’ wax comb, and dried honey, which is made into solid pieces.

Nutrition

Honey is made mostly of water and carbohydrates. It has very little dietary fiber, protein, or fat. In 100 grams of honey, there are about 300 calories.

Honey is mainly made of fructose and glucose. It also has small amounts of other sugars like galactose, maltose, and sucrose. The flavor, color, and smell of honey depend on the flowers the bees visited to make it.

Medical use and research

See also: Apitherapy

Honey has been used for many years to help heal burns and other skin injuries. Some studies show it can help burns heal faster. It is also used as a natural antibiotic because it can fight many types of bacteria.

Honey is sometimes used to help with coughs, especially in children. But it should never be given to babies under one year old because of the risk of a serious illness called botulism. Some special types of honey from certain plants can be poisonous if eaten.

History

People have collected honey for a very long time, even before they started keeping bees. A rock painting in Valencia, Spain, that is at least 8,000 years old shows people gathering honey from wild bees' nests. They used baskets and ropes to reach the nests. In Georgia, scientists found honey in clay jars from a tomb that is between 4,700 and 5,500 years old.

The first written records of beekeeping come from ancient Egypt, where honey was used to sweeten foods and make ointments. Bees were kept at temples to provide honey for many uses. In ancient Greece, there were rules about where bee hives could be placed, and beekeepers would move their hives to find the best flowers for honey. Honey was also valued in ancient India for its special and healing properties.

Religious significance

In ancient Greek religion, honey was the food of Zeus and the twelve Gods of Olympus as nectar and ambrosia.

In the Hebrew Bible, the Promised Land is called "the land of milk and honey" to show its richness. Scholars once thought this honey came from figs or dates. But a find in Tel Rehov, Israel, from the 10th century BC showed that bees were kept there. This suggests the biblical honey might have been made by bees.

In Jewish tradition, honey is eaten at the start of the new year, Rosh Hashanah, to bring sweetness. It is also considered kosher.

Early Christians used honey in christening ceremonies as a symbol of purity. In Islam, the Quran has a chapter called an-Nahl (the Bees), praising honey for its health benefits. In Hinduism, honey is one of the five sacred elixirs called Panchamrita and is used in temple rituals. In Buddhism, the festival of Madhu Purnima remembers when Buddha was given honey by a monkey.

Popular culture

Honey is often linked to famous characters like Winnie-the-Pooh and Bamse's thunder honey. This makes it a sweet and beloved topic in stories and tales.