It All Starts with Bees

The production of honey is not as complicated as it might seem. It's a beautiful sweet and often golden end product of hard working honey bees. Honey production all starts in fields and gardens. This is where honey bees suck the nectar. Nectar is the sugary fluid secreted within the flowers of plants, and it's deliberate. The purpose of nectar is to encourage the pollination by insects and other animals, and in particular, the honey bees.

My Notes:

As long as your honey is raw and totally natural you have invested in a truly wonderful food staple. The three main reasons to invest in raw honey are:

• There are no added preservatives
• There are no added flavorings
• There is no added coloring

Supermarket shelves are not exactly awash with “no added” products these days. This alone makes honey even more valuable as a healthy, natural food.

Let's now take a look at the fascinating additive-free journey that honey takes from bee to bottle. As long as you buy the real McCoy, that bottle of pure honey on your supermarket shelf is nature's natural sweetness.

It Begins with the Bee

Honey bees begin their work by collecting the nectar from flowers. They're relentless in their pursuit of this sugary fluid; hence they've earned their name “worker bees.” Nectar is then naturally broken down into simple sugars and hoarded in the hive's honeycombs. These honeycombs are simple hexagonal cells of wax that the bees make. It's also a place where they store their precious eggs and pollen as well as the honey.

The honeycomb has a very unique hexagonal design. The constant fanning by the bees’ wings serves an important role. It causes evaporation to take place, which in turn creates the thick, sweet liquid we know as honey. So why are the honeycombs hexagonal? Well, as Charles Darwin himself once wrote:

“The bee's honeycomb is a masterpiece of engineering. It is perfect in economizing both labor and wax.”

The Colors and Flavors of Honey

Honeys are not all the same product with an identical or even similar taste. In fact it can vary a lot in color, flavor and texture. How the honey turns out all depends on the type of flower nectar collected by the bees. Some honeys will be very light in color, whereas others will be dark or anywhere between light and dark. In the US there are over 300 unique types of honey produced around the country. Each of these honeys is unique and originates from a different floral source.

OK, so that's the role of the worker bees, now let's look at the role of the beekeeper.

On to the Hive

Honey bees always make a lot more honey than their colony actually needs. This is good news for beekeepers because they get to remove the excess. On average, a thriving hive should produce roughly 80 pounds of surplus honey in a single year.

The way that all beekeepers harvest honey is quite simple. They collect the honeycomb frames and then scrape away the wax cap. The bees make this waxy cap to seal off the honey in each of the cells. Even beeswax has its use and finds its way into wood polishes and candles.

Once the beekeeper has removed the caps, they then place them in an extractor. This is basically a centrifuge that spins the frames which then forces honey out of the combs. The honey goes out to the sides of the extractor where gravity then pulls it to the bottom. Once all the honey is out of the comb the beekeeper can gather it up and move onto the next stage.

The Straining Process

As soon as the beekeeper has gathered their honey from the extractor they need to strain it. Straining removes any remaining bits of wax and other unwanted particles. Some beekeepers prefer to heat the honey to make it easier to strain. Contrary to popular belief, heating honey this way does not alter its natural composition. It simply serves to make the straining process faster, easier and more effective overall.

Time to Bottle Up

After straining, it’s time to get the honey bottled up and labeled. The only job after that is to distribute the end product to various retail outlets. Honey is often presented in glass or plastic containers, but that doesn't matter. What matters is what it says on the label. As long as the ingredients read “pure honey,” you can rest assured you're getting the real deal. In other words, your honey has nothing added from the bee hive through to the bottle.

Why Raw Honey?

Honey is significantly sweeter than table sugar and has attractive chemical properties for baking. Liquid honey does not spoil either. Raw honey isn't just a tasty, nutritious food staple. It has many medicinal uses too, many of which we are only just starting to understand.

Summary

From bees to high street, pure raw honey is unpasteurized and unprocessed. This is its most important characteristics. The final product preserves and passes on all the goodness to you the consumer. Raw honey delivers enzymes, natural vitamins, phytonutrients and many other nutritional elements.