Honey: A Healthy Natural Product

Honey, the Food of the Gods - What is Honey?

Honey is a food product produced by honey bees for their own food supply and as a winter reserve from the nectar of flowers or honeydew. Honey bees "make" bee honey. The bees collect nectar* and honeydew** and process these substances into honey. In this process, water is removed from the collected nectar and body's own enzymes are added. The interplay of this processing creates the sought-after and valuable honey from the nectar and honeydew. It consists of about 200 different ingredients, with the composition varying greatly depending on the type of honey and region. The most significant ingredients by quantity are fructose (27% to 44%), glucose (22% to 41%), and
water (about 18%).

*What is Nectar:

Nectar is a sweet liquid mainly produced by plants. This sugary fluid is secreted by nectaries, special structures that are often located in the floral area of plants. The primary purpose of nectar is to attract pollinators such as bees, butterflies, hummingbirds, and other animals. When these animals use nectar as a food source, they often inadvertently pollinate the plants by transferring pollen from one flower to another.

**What is Honeydew:

Honeydew is a sticky liquid secreted by certain types of insects such as aphids, scale insects, and cicadas. These insects feed on the sap of various plants by piercing into the phloem vessels, the sugar-transporting channels of the plants, with their piercing-sucking mouthparts. They digest only a part of the consumed nutrients, particularly the proteins, while the majority of the sugars remain unused and are excreted as honeydew.

Honey a Natural Product

Honey, as a natural product, must not have anything added or removed from it, as dictated by the Honey Regulation. Therefore, technically all honeys are ORGANIC, even if the term may only be used with certification. Only the filtering of coarser impurities is allowed. The beekeeper removes the filled combs from the beehive. The wax layer that seals the cells is removed, and then the honey can be extracted by spinning. This is only possible if the honey is as warm as it is in the bee's living quarters, about 35 degrees Celsius. The term "cold spun," which is advertised on some honeys, is therefore not permitted according to the Honey Regulation.

Other ingredients: different types of sugars, pollen, minerals, proteins, enzymes, amino acids, vitamins, colorants, and flavoring substances.

Honey can be liquid or solidified into crystals. This primarily depends on the ratio of the two simple sugars, fructose and glucose, but also on how the honey is processed and stored by the beekeeper. Crystallization nuclei such as pollen are important for crystallization. Crystallized honey is a sign of quality.

What Makes Bee Honey So Valuable?

Bee honey is largely composed of sugars, but it's a special kind of sugar that's not comparable to household granulated sugar. As a source of energy, carbohydrates, which include sugars, are indispensable. Honey contains many different types of sugars. In contrast, granulated sugar is made up of just one type of sugar, which is sucrose. When consuming sugar, depending on the type of sugar, the body processes it either quickly (like glucose) or more slowly (like starch from potatoes or corn). Since bee honey consists of many types of sugars, it supplies the organism with sugar over a longer period, meaning the energy it provides is available for muscle activity for a longer duration.

What is Monofloral Honey?

The designation of honey is directed particularly by the botanical and regional origin of the honey. Honey from Germany, labeled as "Real German Honey," is a registered trademark of the German Beekeepers Association. This is in contrast to honey from EU countries and non-EU countries (especially overseas honeys). Special honeys that are harvested from mass flows and contain at least 60% of honey (nectar from the same plant) are referred to as monofloral honeys and are marketed as such.

What is Single-Origin Honey?

If bees find a good source of nectar such as rapeseed, linden, or heather, they repeatedly visit it. Beekeepers call such a steady source a crop. When the content of a single crop in honey is 60% or higher, it is referred to as single-origin honey. Contents from other honey sources are called a contribution. Beekeepers distinguish more than 40 types of monofloral honeys in Germany. These monofloral honeys can be identified by the pollen content in the honey. Beekeepers control where their bees collect nectar by migrating to different flowering areas. Since the insects usually fly only a few kilometers, beekeepers thus transport their beehives, known as apiaries, to specific locations such as the edges of rapeseed fields or a sunflower field.

How Are Monofloral Honeys Produced?

Bees visit numerous nectar sources within a 2 to 3 km radius of their hive to collect nectar, honeydew, and pollen. Honey bees are flower-faithful, meaning that during an outing, a bee visits only the flowers of the same plant species. This is particularly important for pollination, as long as the targeted plants offer enough forage and remain attractive, the bee will stay true to that plant species on subsequent flights. Besides flower fidelity (species fidelity), foraging bees are also site-faithful. Successful foraging bees recruit additional bees from the hive by performing the waggle dance, which leads them to the chosen nectar source/mass forage. If a plant species predominates in the flight area (e.g., mass forage from rapeseed, lime, acacia, or heather), the result, due to the forage offer and the bees' foraging behavior described above, can be a monofloral honey. However, one cannot simply assume that a corresponding monofloral honey will be harvested just because the beehives are placed near a rapeseed field or an acacia grove. It is entirely possible that despite a large sunflower field from a beekeeper's point of view, the bees may have discovered a completely different, more productive, or more attractive forage source (e.g., a field) during their exploratory flights and also visit this nectar source. Of course, some bees will also visit the sunflower field, but the majority will focus on the other forage. Only a honey analysis for botanical origin can provide certainty. As outlined above, bees intensively utilize certain crops, but never exclusively. The legislator takes this into account in the Honey Regulation by not demanding exclusivity for monofloral honeys, but only a predominance (>60%) of the nectar or honeydew content, whose name the honey is to bear. In contrast, a honey with a regional origin must come exclusively, that is 100%, from the specified region (Germany).