Honey

Food reserves for the bees... and yet so much more!

Harvesting honey is one of the best things about being a beekeeper and something we enjoy for a variety of reasons and it's multiple uses. Mostly for the use as a sweetener, but honey also has many others uses and health benefits. Pure, raw honey contains enzymes, antioxidants, and natural antibacterial and anti fungal compounds that help in many ways for many things.

It could take many years of study to learn all that has been discovered and is known today about honey. The fun part is, that similar to learning about honey bees and beekeeping, we don't need to know all there is to know in order to enjoy the bees and their products. We'll visit a few of the basic topics and explore more as we go... things like:

Where does honey come from?
The bees make honey primarily from the nectar they collect when foraging for their food in the fields. The nectar provides the carbohydrate portion of their diet, the pollen provides the proteins, some of which ends up in the honey. This is one of the main reasons that raw, unheated (not exceeding 110°F), unfiltered, unadulterated honey is preferred. The good things in nectar and the pollen grains and beneficial vitamins, amino acids, enzymes, and antioxidants they contain are not cooked off or filtered out.

Nectar is the bait the flowers use to attract pollinators so it can procreate its own species. The Pollen is the byproduct the bee receives, but by her hair being static charged when she flies, it sticks to her and will be carried to her next bloom. This serves the plants needs as the bee acts as carrier completing the plants sexual reproduction process when the tiny grains reach another bloom. This is delivered by the bee of course, while searching for more of the sweet reward bait.

How much honey does a hive produce a year?

Visit the Honey Production page for more on that topic or the Local Honey page for locations to purchase honey from this region.

Tastes Minty?

Or is that a hint of citrus? Maybe Mesquite?

What gives honey it's color and flavor?
There are as many flavors of honey as there are types of blooms in the world. Flavors and colors are derived from the nectar the bees find for forage. The nectar can range in taste and color from dark to light and bitter to very sweet, and all points in between.

Nectar comes from the blooms of many different types of plants, like those that bear fruits and nuts, like Almonds and Citrus trees and vegetables like Row Crops and all the different wildflowers, like Horsemint (aka spotted bee balm) and Mesquite to name only a couple. Each of these can have many complex layers of different minerals and compounds that are unique to the specific plant, or family of plants. Each providing their own flavors and varying shades and depths of colors.

The Colors of Honey

Ranging from clear, like water to very dark, like molasses, and all points between. The colors of honey, like its different flavors, are derived from the floral source. Each having their own chemical make up and composition causing such wide variations.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) officially classifies honey into seven color grades using the pfund scale, with 0 being the lightest and 150 the darkest.: Water White, Extra White, White, Extra Light Amber, Light Amber, Amber, and Dark Amber.

The color of honey is characteristic of its floral source due to minerals and other minor components.

Generally, lighter honeys have a milder flavor and are more often sought out for bottled consumer goods. Darker honeys have a more robust flavor and are more typical of ingredient and food service usages.

The National Honey Board maintains a website with a great deal of information about honey. Visit Honey.com and the Honey Color and Flavor page for more.

Saving for the Future

How do the bees turn their harvest into honey and why?

Honey bees, much like ants and even squirrels, understand that nature provides in seasons. So they instinctively "make hay while the sun is shining", to save as much as possible for when the resources run dry or go dormant for the season.

They have learned to build up their population numbers to peak when there is a nectar flow possibility coming soon. The nurse bees ramp up the brood production as soon as pollen starts coming in after winter. That way will they have a larger workforce to gather as much as they can while the resources are available.

The colony's goal is to gather, prepare are preserve the nectar and pollen, in the form of honey and bee bread, so they will still have food when there will be none available in the field. Much like we can fruits and vegetables for long term storage, bees have a similar system.

"Like Grandma canning the extra green beans from the spring garden. It takes work, but the process will preserve them for months, so there will be green beans available long after the plants in the garden are dried up and gone for the season."

The nectar comes in from the different blooms with different amounts of moisture levels, depending of several factors, like the type of plant or moisture in the ground.

For example, the moisture content from clover, varies, around the different varieties, with sweet clover nectar averaging around 48% water, while other clover nectars can range from 50% to over 80% water before the bees start to process it into honey.

The bees reduce the moisture by fanning their wings and passing the nectar between each other, eventually lowering it to a "honey" level that is between around 14% to 18% moisture content. By reducing the moisture levels in the nectar this low will prevent fermentation and it will last "forever", or certainly for as long as they need it saved.

At this stage, the bees put a wax "cap" seal on the cells containing the, now dryer, nectar. This is to prevent the nectar from reabsorbing any moisture from the air. At this stage, the sweet sticky liquid is thickened and now can be called "Honey".

So as long as the moisture in the air can not reach the honey, with the wax caps intact, the honey will never go bad. In fact, the end result of the processing lowers the pH level of honey down into the highly acidic range of around 3 to 4, which is another reason it will never spoil. These acid levels, that come from the presence of organic acids and other compounds, are too strong for bacteria and fungi to grow in this environment. Making the sweet stuff ideal for treating open wounds, like with burn victims, to prevent infections. A wound dressed with honey will heal much faster and without the soreness associated with any infection.

Page updated

Google Sites

Report abuse