honey!
Honey for breakfast! I love it! (Actually honey anytime will do.) I like to use it to sweeten anything I would sweeten with sugar … OK maybe not my coffee, but I usually drink that black anyway. I do use it in oatmeal, on my cereal, in my tea, over my biscuits and on my waffles, french toast, and pancakes. In honor of National Honey Month let’s talk about honey, hon.
We all pretty much know that honey comes from bees … they fly from flower to flower collecting nectar and take it back to the hive and make honey. Simple, right?
Not really.
Honey is created 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. The worker bees raise larvae and collect the nectar that will become honey in the hive. Leaving the hive, they collect sugar-rich flower nectar and return.
In the hive the bees use their “honey stomachs” to ingest and regurgitate the nectar a number of times until it is partially digested. The bees work together as a group with the regurgitation and digestion until the product reaches a desired quality. It is then stored in honeycomb cells. After the final regurgitation, the honeycomb is left unsealed. However, the nectar is still high in both water content and natural yeasts which, unchecked, would cause the sugars in the nectar to ferment. The process continues as 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. This reduction in water content raises the sugar concentration and prevents fermentation. Ripe honey, as removed from the hive by a beekeeper, has a long shelf life and will not ferment if properly sealed.
Honey is a mixture of sugars and other compounds. With respect to carbohydrates, honey is mainly fructose and glucose, making it similar to the synthetically produced inverted sugar syrup. As with all nutritive sweeteners, honey is mostly sugars and is not a significant source of vitamins or minerals.
Honey typically has a fructose/glucose ratio similar to HFCS 55 (high fructose corn syrup with approximately 55% fructose and 45% glucose), as well as containing some sucrose and other sugars. Like HFCS, honey contains water and has approximately 3 kcal per gram. Because of its similar sugar profile and its lower price, HFCS has been used illegally to “stretch” honey. As a result, checks for adulteration no longer test for sugar but instead test for minute quantities of proteins that can be used to differentiate between HFCS and honey.
Many honeys are made from the one flower. These are called monofloral honey. Typical examples of North American monofloral honeys are clover, orange blossom, sage, eucalyptus, tupelo, manuka, buckwheat, and sourwood. Honey that comes from many blossoms is called polyfloral or wildflower honey. The taste may vary from year to year, and the aroma and the flavor can be more or less intense, depending on which bloomings are prevalent. 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.
Often, beekeeper will truck their hives from farm to farm, orchard to orchard to help pollinate crops. They can then be fairly sure of the primary flower type that makes up their honey. My personal favorites are tupelo, orange blossom, and lime blossom, though to be honest, most any honey will do.
Honey has been harvested since earliest times. Beekeeping dates back to ancient Egypt with more modern methods being developed in medieval times. Whole libraries have been written on the subject.
Keep a jar of honey in you kitchen and use it in cooking when ever a recipe calls for sugar and you won’t be disappointed.
