Interesting facts about honey

The secret of honey

Honey not only sweetens your tea or breakfast bread, but also your everyday life. Healthy, ingenious, good. These three adjectives apply 100% to honey, because this liquid gold has always been more than just a delicious food. Remedy, means of payment, offering or burial gift? Everything! Even the early civilizations used honey for various purposes. The ancient Egyptians referred to it as the food of the gods. The Maya, on the other hand, used liquid gold as an offering to the gods. Furthermore, scholars such as Hippocrates recognized the health benefits of honey in 400 BC. As a honey ointment, it lowered fevers, while competitive athletes who took part in the Olympic Games performed better with honey water.

In addition, honey was once the only sweetener, before industrial sugar took over.
So what is the secret of this unique food?
– In its composition.
Because this liquid gold cannot be produced synthetically, even though there are numerous artificial products on the food market.
In terms of taste, counterfeits are no match for pure honey.
Honey bees existed between 10 and 20 million years before humans.
They therefore fall into the category of the oldest animal life forms that still exist today.

Picture: Buy honeycomb honey in a wooden box.

Why honey? It is pure energy!

Bee pollen is pollen from various flowers of the summer season. Pollen is a superfood that contains enzymes, vitamins, minerals, amino acids and proteins and increases their bioavailability. It carries a perfectly sweet and earthy flavor.

History of honey

Cave paintings in Cuevas de la Araña, in Spain, prove how far back the history of honey goes. According to this, Stone Age people were already aware of the benefits of this liquid gold. There are pictures of honey hunters in the caves. They used honey not only as food, but also as a lure for bears. This shows that humans discovered liquid money a long time ago. So the interesting question is: when did the deliberate keeping of domestic bees to obtain honey as food begin? There is no simple or precise answer to this question. Accordingly, there are only assumptions. According to reports, domestic beekeeping began in Anatolia in the 7th millennium BC, together with targeted honey extraction.

How honey is made...

Honey bees produce the sweet food from honeydew or flower nectar. Honey bees have special proboscises with which they extract the nectar from the plants. They then rely on their honey bladder to carry the collected nectar to the desired location. The industrious insects visit 200 flowers until their honey bladder is completely full. But can you imagine how often worker bees fly out to produce 500 grams of honey? - 40,000 times. Quite a lot, isn't it? One more thing: the distance they fly is three times the circumference of the earth. By the way, forager bee is the synonym for worker bee. In the beehive, they hand over their "hive" to the hive bee. What do these industrious insects do next?

To turn the nectar into long-lasting honey, they extract the water from the juice.
They squeeze it out drop by drop before sucking it up again.
They then store the nectar in their combs.
Meanwhile, water continues to evaporate.
The insects also fan with their wings.
Why do they do this?
– So that they can effectively remove the humidity from the hive.
After this process, it is replaced by the dry outside air.
This process can almost be compared to magic, because the industrious insects reduce the water content of the nectar without the aid of technology.
From 75 to less than 20 percent.
Once the busy bees have reached their desired water content, they close the cells with practical wax caps.
The cap serves as an important signal for the beekeeper.
The sealed honey cells tell him that he can extract the liquid gold.

Honey - indispensable and irresistible

With refined sugar now playing the leading role in everyday life, the role of honey as an alternative sweetener is constantly receding into the background. And yet a large majority cannot imagine their lives without the sweet liquid. For breakfast, for baking or for snacking: Honey serves as a small sweetener with a big impact. It also acts as a savior in times of need: it transforms spicy, burnt or oversalted dishes into edible meals in an instant. Its sweet components also balance out sour and bitter tastes. You should store your jar of honey in a place protected from light. This will allow you to enjoy your honey product for a long time. In the event that crystals form, a mild water bath is sufficient. The ideal temperature is 40 degrees Celsius: the sugar crystals dissolve and the honey returns to a creamy consistency. Incidentally, crystallization is a natural process that has no effect on the properties of the honey. As a rule, the process depends on the type of honey. Some types of honey crystallize quickly, others very slowly and some not at all.

Different types of honey sweeten your everyday life

Monofloral or polyfloral? Beekeepers divide honey into these two categories. The variant depends on the plant species. Monofloral: Bees have mainly focused on one particular plant when collecting honey. Monofloral honey includes varieties that contain up to 80 percent of a single plant species. Acacia, chestnut, lavender, lime blossom, sage and sunflower are monofloral honey varieties. Polyfloral honey, on the other hand, is made up of different plant species that bloom at the same time of year. It gets its name depending on the respective place of origin: forest, meadow, wild flowers.

Why honey promotes your health

Honey enjoys a special status among foods. Why? Because it has a balanced mixture of different substances: they amount to a total of 245. They also have the ability to support the functions of human organs. This includes the elimination of toxins. For several centuries, experts have attributed a healing and health-promoting effect to honey. This is why it enjoys great popularity among natural remedies. It acts as a bactericidal agent against bacterial infections. Honey is also effective against colds, gastrointestinal diseases and fungal infections. Honey also serves as a digestive aid because its enzymes promote digestion. Due to the natural combination of active ingredients, honey breaks down in your stomach within a short time. From there, it quickly finds its way to your lymphatic system. The active ingredients then enter your bloodstream and tissues. Its health-promoting effect begins.

In some cultures, honey serves as a natural sedative with no side effects.
It can also prevent an increase in blood lipid and cholesterol levels.
The liquid gold can also counteract the development of diseases of the digestive and detoxification organs.
Honey can also help in the fight against anemia.
The antioxidants it contains can also lower high blood pressure.

Composition of honey

Natural bee honey contains on average between 15 and 20 percent water, between 75 and 80 percent sugar (glucose, fructose, sucrose, maltose), vitamins, minerals, trace elements, proteins, enzymes, alkaloids, organic and inorganic acids as well as fragrances and colorants.
The composition of the different honey components varies depending on the area and season of collection.