The value of ripe honey
24/01/2019
Honey is collected from wild bee colonies, or from domesticated beehives.
Wild bee nests are sometimes located by following a honeyguide bird. The bees may first be pacified by using smoke from a bee smoker. The smoke triggers a feeding instinct (an attempt to save the resources of the hive from a possible fire), making them less aggressive and the smoke obscures the pheromones the bees use to communicate.
The honeycomb is removed from the hive and the honey may be extracted from that, either by crushing or by using a honey extractor. The honey is then usually filtered to remove beeswax and other debris.
Before the invention of removable frames, bee colonies were often sacrificed in order to conduct the harvest. The harvester would take all the available honey and replace the entire colony the next spring. Since the invention of removable frames, the principles of husbandry lead most beekeepers to ensure that their bees will have enough stores to survive the winter, either by leaving some honey in the beehive or by providing the colony with a honey substitute such as sugar water or crystalline sugar (often in the form of a “candyboard”). The amount of food necessary to survive the winter depends on the race of bees and on the length and severity of local winters.
The quality of honey is depended on neither it was fully ripen or not. The ripe 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.As with all nutritive sweeteners, honey is mostly sugars and contains only trace amounts 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 depends on the flowers available to the bees that produced the honey.
Typical honey analysis:
Fructose: 38.2%
Glucose: 31.3%
Maltose: 7.1%
Sucrose: 1.3%
Water: 17.2%
Higher sugars: 1.5%
Ash: 0.2%
Other/undetermined: 3.2%
Its glycemic index ranges from 31 to 78, depending on the variety.
Honey has a density of about 1.36 kilograms per litre (36% denser than water).
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