Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
manner that makes it easy to extract, then you need to learn more about beekeeping.
But, in the meantime, what is this sweet substance and where does it come from?
Composition
Being a natural product, honey varies in composition enormously but, essentially, it is a
fluid, viscous or crystallized substance, produced by bees from the nectar of blossoms
that bees collect, transform or combine with substances of their own, which they then
store and leave to mature. Its main components are water and sucrose. Sucrose is
composed of glucose and fructose, and it is the glucose-to-fructose ratio that determines
some of honey's most noticeable physical characteristics, such as how long it will take
to crystallize, for example. Water is always present in honey, and the amount is critical
to the beekeeper when processing or storing extracted honey. As we will see in Chapter
7, the beekeeper should always check their honey to ensure that this moisture/water
presence is within bounds.
A more detailed definition of the composition of honey would be as follows:
Honey is composed mainly of sugars and water.
The average honey is 79.6% sugar and 17.2% water.
The main sugars are fructose (38.2%) and glucose (31.3%).
Other sugars include maltose (7.3%) and sucrose (1.3%).
Honey also contains acids (.57%), protein (.26%), a small amount of minerals
(.17%) and a number of other minor components, including pigments, flavour and
aroma substances, sugar alcohols, colloids and vitamins. This group of materials
constitutes about 2.2% of the total composition.
Properties
Honey has many determinative properties but, for the average beekeeper who wants to
sell honey, the important ones are as follows.
