Honey is a sweet food made by bees using nectar from flowers. The variety produced by honey bees (the genus Apis) is the one most commonly referred to, as it is the type of honey collected by most beekeepers and consumed by people. Honeys are also produced by bumblebees, stingless bees, and other hymenopteran insects such as honey wasps, though the quantity is generally lower and they have slightly different properties compared to honey from the genus Apis. Honey bees convert nectar into honey by a process of regurgitation and evaporation. They store it as a primary food source in wax honeycombs inside the beehive.
Honey gets its sweetness from the monosaccharides fructose and glucose, and has about the same relative sweetness as granulated sugar. It has attractive chemical properties for baking and a distinctive flavor that leads some people to prefer it over sugar and other sweeteners. Most microorganisms do not grow in honey because of its low water activity of 0.6. However, honey sometimes contains dormant endospores of the bacterium Clostridium botulinum, which can be dangerous to infants, as the endospores can transform into toxin-producing bacteria in infants' immature intestinal tracts, leading to illness and even death.
People who have a weakened immune system should not eat honey because of the risk of bacterial or fungal infection. No evidence shows any benefit of using honey to treat diseases. Providing 64 calories in a typical serving of one tablespoon, honey contains no significant nutrient content.
Honey use and production has a long and varied history. Honey collection is an ancient activity. Humans apparently began hunting for honey at least 8,000 years ago, as evidenced by a cave painting in Valencia, Spain.
Formation...
Honey is produced by bees from nectar collection which serves the dual purpose to support metabolism of muscle activity during foraging and for long-term food storage as honey. During foraging, bees access part of the nectar collected to support metabolic activity of flight muscles by hydrolyzing sucrose to glucose and fructose, with the majority of collected nectar destined for regurgitation, digestion and storage as honey. In cold weather or when other food sources are scarce, adult and larval bees use stored honey as food.
By contriving for bee swarms to nest in artificial hives, people have been able to semi domesticate the insects and harvest excess honey. In the hive or in a wild nest, the three types of bees are:
- a single female queen bee
- a seasonally variable number of male drone bees to fertilize new queens
- 20,000 to 40,000 female worker bees
Leaving the hive, foraging bees collect sugar-rich flower nectar and return to the hive where they use their "honey stomachs" to ingest and regurgitate the nectar repeatedly until it is partially digested. Bee digestive enzymes - invertase, amylase and diastase - and gastric acid hydrolyze sucrose to a mixture of glucose and fructose. The bees work together as a group with the regurgitation and digestion for as long as 20 minutes until the product reaches storage quality. It is then placed in honeycomb cells left unsealed while still high in water content (about 20%) and natural yeasts, which, unchecked, would cause the sugars in the newly formed honey to ferment. The process continues as hive bees flutter their wings constantly to circulate air and evaporate water from the honey to a content of about 18%, raising the sugar concentration and preventing fermentation. The bees then cap the cells with wax to seal them.[11] As removed from the hive by a beekeeper, honey has a long shelf life and will not ferment if properly sealed.
Another source of honey is from a number of wasp species, such as the wasps Brachygastra lecheguana and Brachygastra mellifica, which are found in South and Central America. These species are known to feed on nectar and produce honey.
Some wasps, such as the Polistes versicolor, even consume honey themselves, switching from feeding on pollen in the middle of their lifecycles to feeding on honey, which can better provide for their energy needs.
Collection...
Honey is collected from wild bee colonies, or from domesticated beehives. Wild bee nests are sometimes located by following a honey guide bird. The bees may first be pacified by using smoke from a bee smoker. The smoke triggers a feeding instinct (an attempt to save the resources of the hive from a possible fire), making them less aggressive and the smoke obscures the pheromones the bees use to communicate.
The honeycomb is removed from the hive and the honey may be extracted from that, either by crushing or by using a honey extractor. The honey is then usually filtered to remove beeswax and other debris.
Before the invention of removable frames, bee colonies were often sacrificed in order to conduct the harvest. The harvester would take all the available honey and replace the entire colony the next spring. Since the invention of removable frames, the principles of husbandry lead most beekeepers to ensure that their bees will have enough stores to survive the winter, either by leaving some honey in the beehive or by providing the colony with a honey substitute such as sugar water or crystalline sugar (often in the form of a "candy board"). The amount of food necessary to survive the winter depends on the variety of bees and on the length and severity of local winters.
EDIT BY: SHAMLA (SRI LANKA)
