Honey

Honey, in a modern glass container and a doser (sweet roll).

Honey is a very sweet and viscous fluid produced by bees of the genus Apis, mainly the domestic bee, from the nectar of flowers or from secretions of flower parts. from plants or from excretions of plant-sucking insects (aphids). These substances are collected by the bees, then transformed by combining them with their own substances, deposited, dehydrated and stored in the honeycombs for maturation. The intervention of man in the process of exploiting the honeycombs of the hive is known as beekeeping.

Honey has been used throughout the world for thousands of years, either as a flavoring for concoctions, food or medicine. Its composition is variable, however its main component is carbohydrates in the form of monosaccharides such as fructose and glucose, as well as disaccharides such as maltose, isomaltose, maltulose, sucrose, turanose and nigerose. These ingredients are responsible for the intense sweetness of honey. In addition, it contains oligosaccharides such as panosa; enzymes such as amylase, peroxide oxidases, catalase, and acid phosphorylase; it also contains amino acids, some vitamins B, C, niacin, folic acid, minerals such as iron and zinc, and antioxidants.

The average world production of honey is approximately 1,200,000 tons. The main producing countries are China, Turkey, Argentina, Ukraine, Mexico and the United States. The main importers worldwide are the European Union and the United States.

Training

A bee in the asteraceae sepal with its extended prognosis.

Honey is produced by bees collecting nectar and honeydew for use as sugars, consumed to support metabolism for muscle activity during foraging, or stored long-term.As supplies, Honeybees Some of the collected nectar is accessed by bees to support flight muscle activity, for regurgitation, digestion. In cold climates or when other food sources are scarce, adult and larval bees consume stored honey.

By devising swarms of honey bees to nest in artificial hives, people have been able to semi-domesticate the insects and harvest excess honey. In the hive or in a wild nest, the three types of bees are:

• A single bee female queen
• A seasonally variable number of male drows to fertilize new queens
• 20 000 a 40 000 worker bees

Collection and processing

Panal showing hexagonal prismatic wax cells where bees store honey.

On leaving the hive, a bee collects sugar-rich nectar from flowers, sucks it up through its proboscis, and places it in its proventriculus, which lies just dorsal to its food stomach. In apis mellifera, the honey stomach contains about 40 mg of nectar, or about 50% of the discharged weight of the honey. bee, which can require over a thousand flowers and over an hour to fill. The nectar is generally 70 to 80% water content. Salivary enzymes and proteins from the bee's hypopharyngeal gland are added to the nectar to begin breaking down the sugars, slightly increasing the water content. The foraging bees then return to the hive, where they regurgitate and transfer the nectar to the bees in the hive. The hive bees then use their honey stomachs to ingest and regurgitate the nectar, repeatedly blowing bubbles between their jaws until it is partially digested. The bubbles create a large surface area per volume and some of the water is removed by evaporation. The bee's digestive enzymes hydrolyze, converting sucrose to a mixture of glucose and fructose and break down other starches and proteins, increasing acidity.

Bees work together as a group with regurgitation and digestion for 20 minutes, passing nectar from one bee to another, until the product reaches the combs in storage quality. It is then placed in comb cells. and is left unsealed while it still has a high water content (around 50 to 70%) and natural yeasts that, left unchecked, would cause the sugars in the newly formed honey to ferment. Bees are among the few insects that can generate large amounts of body heat, and those in the hive constantly regulate the temperature of the hive, either by heating with their bodies or cooling by evaporating water, to maintain a fairly constant temperature of about 35 °C in honey storage areas. The process continues as the bees in the hive flap their wings constantly to circulate the air and evaporate the water from the honey to a content of around 18%, raising the sugar concentration beyond the saturation point and preventing fermentation. The bees then cover the cells with wax to seal them. As taken from the hive by a beekeeper, honey has a long shelf life and will not ferment if properly sealed.

World production

Major honey producers (in tons) by 2020
ChinaChina	446 900
TurkeyTurkey	114 113
Argentina	79 468
IranIran	77 567
Ukraine Ukraine	71 279
United States	69 104
India	67 442
Russia Russia	65 006
Mexico Mexico	64 253
EthiopiaEthiopia	50 000
BrazilBrazil	42 346
other countries	704 063
Global total	1 851 541

History

Messolytic rock painting (8000 a) 6000 a. C.), in the Cave of the Spider, near the town of Bicorp (Valencia). It represents a feminine honey-gathering figure in a tree panal.

Honey has qualities recognized by human beings since ancient times, as food and to sweeten, with a greater power than sugar cane. The first evidence of its consumption appears in cave paintings from the Mesolithic, around 6000 BC. C..

There are prehistoric records in cave paintings of the use of honey.

There are various historical references to this substance. Around 2500 B.C. C., the Sumerians already knew its medicinal properties.

In addition to Biblical citations (composed in the last centuries of the 1st millennium BC), many other peoples, such as the ancient Egyptians or the Greeks, for example, referred to honey as a sacred product, reaching the point of serve as a way to pay taxes.

In Egyptian excavations dating back more than 2,000 years, perfectly preserved samples of honey were found in lightly covered vessels that were still edible and only had to be heated.

Types

Cutting a Panal

There are about 320 varieties of honey from different floral origins. The taste, color and smell of honey depends on the different sources of flowers and plants visited by the bees.

Depending on the species of insect:

• Honey bee
• Wasp honey; honey produced by several species of wasp
• Honey of a mellow ant.

According to its plant origin, a difference is made between:

• Honey of flowers: the one produced by bees from the nectar of flowers. Many varieties are distinguished:
  • Monofloral: predominance of the nectar of a species. The most common are chestnut, rosemary, ulmo, thyme, brezo, azahar, thylo, acacia, eucalyptus, lavender, zarzamora, alfalfa, etcetera.
  • Multifloral (“various flowers”): the nectar of several different plant species, and in very variable proportions.
  • Miel of the mountain or mountain, and of the desert (varadulce, mezquite, gatun and eltata), which are special types of a thousand flowers.
• Honey honey, honey, honey, honey dew, dew honey or forest honey is the one produced by bees from the sweet secretions of aphids, pigs and other insects sucking savia, usually of pines, bees, oaks, corks and other arbusive plants. It is usually less sweet, very dark color, solidifies with difficulty, and it is not rare that it displays spicy smell and flavor, resinous. Honeyato honey from pine trees has a peculiar pine flavor, and is appreciated for its medicinal use in Europe and Turkey.

Flower honey is transparent and solidifies over time depending on its plant origin and the temperature. Below 14 °C the solidification process is accelerated. Heather honeys harden very quickly and chestnut honeys take a long time.

The study of pollen in virgin honey (melissopalynology) allows us to determine its floral origin. Since pollen particles are electrostatically charged and attract other particles, the techniques used in melissopalynology can be used in environmental studies of radioactive particles, dust, or pollution.

Chemical composition

Honey contains:

Lack of moisture is a fundamental condition for the preservation of honey. As long as the humidity percentage remains below 18% nothing can grow in it. Above that value, fermentative processes may appear.

The mineral content of honey is very low. The most frequent are calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, zinc, phosphorus and potassium. They are also present about half of the existing amino acids, organic acids (acetic acid, citric acid, among others) and vitamins of the B complex, vitamin C, D and E. Honey also has a considerable variety of antioxidants (flavonoids and phenolics).

Uses

Detail of the hexagonal cells of a panal

Culinary

Honey is mainly used in gastronomy, both in sweet and savory recipes, it is common as an accompaniment to bread or toast (for breakfast and snacks) and as a sweetener for various drinks. Being rich in sugars like fructose, honey is hygroscopic (absorbs moisture from the air), so adding a small amount to breads and cakes causes them to harden more slowly. Honey is the main ingredient in mead, produced from honey and water. It is also known as "honey wine".

Therapeutic

Recipients to store, transport or serve honey. To the left: pottery without staining, with two handles. And to the right: glazed and decorated ceramic, without handles. Both with matching cap. Other names: honey, brown (Aragon), orchard of honey. Pieces of the Museo de Cerámica Nacional de Chinchilla de Montearagón (Albacete, Spain).

The medicinal benefits of honey were already known around 2500 BC. C. by the Sumerians in Mesopotamia. The ancient Egyptians, Assyrians, Chinese, Greeks, and Romans used honey to treat wounds. It was later "rediscovered" by modern medicine due to its important bactericidal properties in wounds infected with multi-resistant bacteria to antibiotics.

Antimicrobial and antiseptic

It can be used externally due to its antimicrobial and antiseptic properties, helping to heal and prevent infections in wounds or superficial burns.

Bees also add an enzyme called glucose oxidase. When honey is applied to wounds, this enzyme causes the local release of hydrogen peroxide.

Antioxidant

Darker honeys have greater antioxidant power because they are richer in phenolic compounds such as flavonoids and tannins.

Energetic

Due to its content of simple sugars, which are quickly assimilated, honey is highly caloric (about 3.4 kcal/g), making it useful as a quick source of energy.

Virgin honey also contains enzymes that aid digestion, as well as various vitamins and antioxidants. For this reason, the consumption of honey is usually recommended at temperatures not higher than 60 °C, since at higher temperatures it begins to lose beneficial properties when some of these elements volatilize.

Colds, coughs, sore throats

It is used for the symptomatic relief of colds. Studies in people between the ages of 2 and 18 with respiratory tract infections showed that it is able to soothe irritated membranes in the back of the throat and that it has antioxidant and antivirals. In addition, a WHO report considers it safe, outside the period of lactation, to relieve cough.

The sweetness and texture of the syrup soothe a sore throat, but its antioxidant content and antimicrobial effect also play a role. It is not recommended for children under one year of age because there is a danger of developing botulism. This latter risk becomes negligible in older children.

Colds are popularly combated in some countries by sweetening lemon juice or onion tea with honey. The World Health Organization recommends the use of honey to relieve coughs in children over one year of age. However, honey does not show greater benefits than other drugs such as dextromethorphan, but without the associated adverse effects.

Cosmetics

It is used in cosmetics (creams, facial cleansing masks, toners, etc.) due to its astringent and softening qualities.

As a preservative

Loza jar for honey, with wood taster

It is an excellent natural preservative. However, it is not always healthy. Because it comes from wildflowers, there are some times and places when the honey produced by bees is highly toxic. Rhododendrons and azaleas produce nectar that is highly poisonous to humans, although harmless to bees, which thus produce deadly honey. In some regions of the world, hives are emptied immediately after the flowering season, removing any debris to prevent accidental poisoning. There are stories of the use of poisonous honey as a weapon of war in ancient times, but they are not corroborable. Such poisonous honey is very difficult to find. The shape of the azalea flower makes it difficult for bees to access the nectar, and at the time of bloom there are almost always other flowers that are more attractive to bees.

It is highly durable, it does not expire. Thanks to its high sugar concentration, it kills bacteria by osmotic lysis. Airborne yeasts cannot thrive in honey due to the low moisture it contains. The transfers of human bodies in antiquity were made submerged in honey; for example Alexander the Great was transferred from Babylon to Alexandria in Egypt in 323 BC. C. and that of Agesilao II, king of Sparta, from Egypt to his hometown in 360 BC. C., using honey to avoid decomposition. The preservative effect of honey is due to its low concentration of water and is identical to that which allows the prolonged conservation of sweets and fruits in syrup, where the high sugar content decreases the relative water content.

Precautions

High levels of glucose and fructose in the diet (more than 20% of total energy) are related to an increase in blood pressure and with an increase in body fat and liver fat, cholesterol, heart problems, and type 2 diabetes (never type 1 diabetes).

The consumption of honey is totally discouraged for children under 12 months. Unlike adults and older children, the juices of the digestive system of babies have not yet developed enough acidity, so the sweet compounds in honey create the right environment for the growth of Clostridium spores. botulinum, which causes botulism. These toxins, harmless to the stomach of adults, can be deadly in young children.

Certain honeys from some plant species of the ericaceae family such as Rhododendron ponticum or nightshades such as Datura stramonium and Hyoscyamus niger are toxic. In many cases the toxic substance is grayanotoxin.

Related products

Along with honey, bees produce other important products: wax, royal jelly and propolis.

Equivalent products

Among the equivalent or similar products in appearance or sweetness we can find sap honey, such as palm honey, date honey and maple syrup; and equally the Arrope and the pulp of the honey carob pods among others.