As many of you know, bees collect nectar from flowers. Nectar is the sweet liquid that draws the bees to the flower. The bees climb onto or into the flower and suck up the nectar with their straw-like mouth and collect it in a little sac called a crop. They also collect pollen on their legs. As they move from flower to flower they leave a little bit of that pollen on each new flower they visit. That is called pollination and that is how flowers reproduce.

Bees take the pollen and nectar back to their hives and put it into the honeycomb, six-sided cells, they have built from wax wax. It is the nectar that the bees turn into honey. They fan it with their wings to evaporate some of the moisture in the liquid. Honey is just concentrated nectar.

Bees are actually keeping the honey in storage for the winter months when there are no flowers. But they make more than they need, so beekeepers take the extra honey out of the hive and leave them enough to make it through the winter months.

Beekeepers use smoke to keep bees calm when they open up a hive box. the bees start to eat honey when they smell smoke, which makes them sleepy.

HOW DO BEES MAKE BEESWAX?

Beeswax is the original food storage system, storing honey for bees. Did you know to produce a pound of wax that bees need to ingest 6-8 pounds of honey? The British Bee Keepers Association is essential to the honeybee colony, being used to construct the combs in which they raise their brood and store pollen and honey for the winter.

Female worker bees make the beeswax to build the honeycomb. Forager bees bring the nectar back to the hive in their stomach where it is passed from bee to bee to reduce the water content and become honey. The British Bee Keepers Association estimated that bees need to visit an incredible 30 million flowers to produce a pound of beeswax.

Bees huddle together to increase the temperature in the hive to at least 33 C. this enables the wax glands in their abdomen to convert the sugar from honey into beeswax which oozes through small pores to form scales on their abdomen. They or other hive worker bees chew these small scales to turn them into beeswax of the right consistency to build the comb. The wax scales are about 3 mm across and 0.1 mm thick. About 1100 scales are needed to product 1 gram of wax.

HONEY FOR NUTRITION AND HEALTH

Honey is a high carbohydrate food, its glycemic index varies within a wide range from 32 to 85, depending on the botanical source. It contains small amounts of proteins, enzymes, amino acids, minerals, trace elements, vitamins, aroma compounds and polyphenols.

• About 95% of the honey’s dry matter is composed of carbohydrates, in total about 25 different di- and trisaccharides.
• Fructose-rich honeys such as a acacia honey have a low GI.
• Honey has been shown to possess antimicrobial, antiviral, anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, antimutagenic and antitumor effects.
• Due to its high carbohydrate content and functional properties honey is an excellent source of energy for athletes.
• Most of the health promoting properties of honey are only achieved by application of rather high doses of honey such as 50 to 80 grams per intake.

Honey can strengthen your immune system. Do you suffer from seasonal allergies? When producing honey, bees gather nectar from flowers in the area. the honey produced contains trace amounts of pollen from those flowers. Consuming local honey will boost your antioxidant intake and help to strengthen your immune system to allergens in your area and provide relief from the symptoms.

Honey can soothe a sore throat. Whenever I had a cold or scratchy throat growing up, my grandmother always gave me honey and lemon mixed together. It works. Still does! Gargling honey can provide relief from an aggressive cough also. If this is difficult for you, try adding it to a warm cup of tea.

HONEY AND ITS NUTRITIONAL AND ANTIINFLAMMATORY VALUE

Inflammation is the main key role in developing chronic disease including cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, arthritis, and neurodegenerative disease which possess a huge challenge for treatment. With massively compelling evidence of the role played by nutritional modulation in preventing inflammation-related diseases, there is a growing interest into the search for natural functional foods with therapeutic and preventive actions.

A nutritional healthy product, honey is produced mainly by two types of bees: honeybees and the stingless bee. Since both types of honey possess distinctive phenolic and flavonoid compounds, there is recently an intensive interest in their biological and clinical actions against inflammation-mediated chronic disease. The review in the BMC Complementary Medicine and Therapies shed the light specifically on the bioavailability and bioaccessibility of honey polyphenols and highlight their roles in targeting inflammatory pathways in gastrointestinal tract disorders, edema, cancer, metabolic and cardiovascular disease and gut microbiota.

HOW HONEY IS MADE

If you are looking for an all-natural sweetener alternative, you’ve likely stumbled upon articles suggesting the use of sweeteners like coconut sugar, cocoa, maple syrup and blackstrap molasses. While these sweeteners are all-natural, they each have stark differences. Due to the variations in both taste and texture, it is unlikely that someone would confuse pure maple syrup for cacao and vice versa.

When it comes to agave nectar and honey, the two types of natural sugar are very similar that they can often be used interchangeably in most recipes without fail. When deciding between agave vs. honey, it’s important to consider how they are made, their structure, and other benefits. While agave and honey can look and feel similar.

Agave is derived from the agave plant, it is a succulent native to the Americas. It produces a sweet sap at its core, which is what agave nectar is made from. When harvested, agave plants are taken to a facility where the  sap is extracted through a pressure cooking method. Once the agave syrup is removed, it is then bottled and delivered to grocery stores.

Honey, on the other hand, is made by a very different process. As mentioned above, honey begins as flower nectar, which is harvested by bees and taken to the hive. Once arrived at the hive, bees turn the honey into simple sugar, then take it and store it in the honeycomb to preserve its freshness, and protect it from outside contaminants.

Without bees, honey cannot be made, and because of their crucial role in the honey harvesting process, unlike agave, honey is not considered a vegan food item.

HONEY VS. AGAVE

Honey is ultimately the healthier choice if you are deciding between honey vs agave. Honey is primarily made up of fructose, whereas agave has more significant amounts of glucose. Honey offers a wide variety of health benefits not found in any other natural sweetener.

Although both honey and agave are similar to table sugar. Honey is structurally more like table sugar than agave. While honey is the healthier choice, a small amount of agave may be more beneficial than table sugar like white sugar or brown sugar.

If you have a diabetic condition, hypoglycemia, obesity or any other illness, please ask your doctor or an alternative medical specialist if honey (of any type) would be acceptable for you.