So, What is Honey?

By John Vendy

Many of you will have tasted and enjoyed the wide variety of honeys available or even
benefited from its medicinal properties, but have you ever wondered how it was made? Or
why it is made?

Bumblebees dont make honey. They collect nectar and eat it as it is. They have no need
to store it as a bumblebee colony dwindles in the autumn from its peak of a few hundred
bees to leave only newly mated queens who hibernate over winter.

A honeybee colony also reduces in numbers from the end of summer, but from its peak of
40 000 to 50 000 bees down to only 10 000 to 15 000 bees. Some of these bees will die
over winter, but the majority will survive and become the workforce that allow the colony to
expand and grow in the spring. All those bees need sustenance throughout the cold
months when there are few flowers about and its too cold for the bees to fly on most days.

The nectar that they collect is made up of about 80% water with the rest being sugars.
They carry it back to the hive in their honey stomach, similar to a cows second stomach.
From here it is regurgitated and passed to bees in the hive whose job it is to store the
nectar in the honeycombs.

When stored in the bee hive the nectar is exposed to naturally occurring yeasts. Bakers,
cooks and brewers will know that when sugar and yeast gets together fermentation occurs.
When nectar has fermented it can give bees dysentery, so the food is essentially ruined for
them.

Throughout the summer, some of the nectar collected by the bees is placed in
honeycombs and kept warm. Its regularly withdrawn from the comb cells then spat back
into the cell, increasing the surface area exposed to the warm air in the hive (around 35 oC)
to evaporate water form the nectar. This also adds enzymes to the nectar. Once the water
content has been reduced to 18% or less of the total volume, the result is honey. This low
water content will prevent fermentation. The cells containing honey will have a cap of
beeswax put on them to prevent water being re-absorbed in to the honey.

The flavour is dependant on the flower varieties that the bees have visited. Most are multi-
floral as its difficult to persuade bees not to visit a selection of flowers! For instance, to
get heather honey, bee hives are positioned in the middle of land that has little else other
than heather flowering. If left for too long on a mono-crop, the bees health will suffer as,
like us, they need a balanced diet.

So in summary, the honey on your toast is made from nectar with the addition of a little bit
of bee spit! Sounds gross, but is sooo tasty!