What we can find in ripe honey and how to recognize fake honey.

Honey - we all know it and the most of us like it. What do we know about it?

Starting from the beginning. Honey is made from the nectar of plants or honeydew.

What is the honeydew? The simplest explanation is to describe it as "diarrhoea" of aphids. However, not to warry the gourmets of this type of honey, I explain that it is a substance covering needles or leaves (oaks, hazel or lime tree). Aphids eat it to obtain proteins but don’t digest sugar which is also a part of this substance. Therefore, they excrete it in the form of sweet, sticky "poops". For your comfort, I would like to add that honeydew honey has more micro and macro elements than its nectar counterpart.

Bees harvesting honey swallow nectar or honeydew and the process of making it into honey already begins. The enzymes contained in bee-pickers’ saliva convert sugar from nectar/honeydew into simple sugars (glucose, fructose). A bee-picker arrives at the hive and passes a droplet of sweet liquid to a bee-storekeeper. That one further processes collected honey with saliva, chews it, and then places it in the cell of the honeycomb. Now the future honey is ventilated so that the excess of water evaporates. It is again transferred to the cell where it is matures. When it is ready, the cell is filled to the top and covered with wax. Only when is honey considered as FULLY NUTRITIOURS.

It is not the end, though. Honey, even taken from the hive, works all the time. Complex sugars under the influence of bee saliva enzymes are converted into simple sugars (glucose and fructose). Thus, when the honey gets older, it is more valuable as wine (notorious).

A part of sugars, honey includes:

−organic acids (formic, oxalic, lactic, malic, acetic, etc.); if the honey is not sufficiently processed by bees, i.e. taken too fast from the hive, it contains less acids;

−enzymes - however, in unripened honey, sugared or heated to the temperature above 50^oC enzymes are destroyed. This makes honey less valuable (notorious) because it loses vital features;

−micro and macro elements (such as potassium, phosphorus, calcium and sodium);

−water (in properly produced and extracted honey it should be between 16% and 20% of water. When there is more, honey it is to liquid because the water contained in it didn’t manage to evaporate);

−inhibin (a bactericidal action). Please remember, inhibin is very sensitive to light and elevated temperature. Honey should be stored in dark, dry and cool rooms. Do not buy honey that is standing for      a long time, e.g. at a shop front or in a sunny place like on a market tables during hot days, where it is displayed in full sunshine;

−a trace of vitamins A, B2, C and PP;

−proteins (most of the proteins are in honeys produced in summer and autumn);

−esters, tannins, waxes, essential oils.

Storage and processing of honey.

Honey is best stored in temperature 10-20^oC. Higher temperature means more runny honey. Of course, there are situations when you need to heat it up a little. When needed, you may use a safe but long-lasting method, i.e. put a jar or other pot with honey into a pot of warm water and wait as it starts melting. You can also heat honey very slowly but in a temperature not higher than 50^oC. Above this temperature the activity of enzymes contained in honey is weakened. Above 60^oC we lose vitamins and bactericidal inhibin. At temperatures above 80^oC, honey is only a mixture of sugars. So let's take it to heart and not heat it up unnecessarily.

Certainly, there are baked products such as gingerbread, in which honey is in a temperature of almost 200^oC. It has no longer its health properties but apart from the sweetener, it offers the possibility of maintaining freshness and humidity (stickiness) of the cake for a longer time.

A fake honey.

There are cases of dishonest honey production. Honey is heated, so note that if the consistency of honey that was bought in winter or spring and summer honey bought in autumn is liquid, it means that they had been heated before pouring into jars.

To produce honey faster, especially when there is not much food for bees, dishonest beekeepers feed their bees with sugar, and then sell such honey as sterling. The apiary is then transformed into a “factory” and bee into workers. A man is a boss, il cappo di tutti.  Such honey has no properties that offer the plants from which nectar comes from.

You should also watch out for early spring honeys. They may contain sugar left after feeding bees in autumn and winter. Such types of honey are generally lighter in colour. Honey may also be "diluted" with sugar or potato syrup. The raspberry honey e.g. one with intense red colour, is also puzzling. These are honeys "gentrified" with raspberry juice. Such honey will not crystallize.

It is best to buy from a friend, a trusty beekeeper. However, if it is not possible, below you will find: 

several methods to check the truth quality and value of honey.

Proving it at home that honey is not faked is really difficult.

You find a table below that will help you recognize the color, smell and taste of honey from the nectar of a plant or honeydew. Also, pay attention to the following factors.

"Real" honey shouldn’t roll on a smooth surface. Bland honey with a poor scent, pulling like a syrup is rigged with sugar or potato syrup.

You can also put honey to the decanting test. A spoonful of honey is taken from a jar and then poured from a about 30 cm onto the honey in the jar. When the "hill" is formed - everything is fine, while the funnel - it means that the honey has too much water, so it is defective.

When we deal with ripe honey we will have the following proportions: its 1 liter will weigh from 1.42 to 1.44 kg.

Source: Irena Gumowska „People and bees” (org. „Pszczoły i ludzie”), page 17 

Sandwiches with healthy lime honey, the honey is liquid because it’s just been taken from bees.

The text was created on the basis of my own experience (I came from the family with really long (several generations) tradition and the book by Irena Gumowska „People and bees” (org. "Pszczoły i ludzie"), WATRA Publishing House, 1985.

Related articles:

Honey part 2

Propolis

Bee pollen

Royal jelly

Beeswax