CRYSTALLIZATION AND HONEY QUALITY

Let us first define or explain what crystallisation of honey is. When honey takes on a solid or semi-solid from, it is said to be crystallised. Usually it is most noticeable when honey is put in the fridge and there are noticeable white granular substances at the bottom which most people around here conclude to be sugar (sucrose) granules.

This natural phenomenon happens when glucose, one of three main sugars in honey, spontaneously precipitates out of the supersaturated honey solution. The glucose loses water (becoming glucose monohydrate) and takes the form of a crystal.

Honey will crystallize because it is a supersaturated sugar solution. Let me be quick to add that this is not the sugar we all are medically worried about, on the average honey will contain only about 1.3% of the sugar(sucrose) that is harmful to health. The majority of the sugar in honey is glucose and fructose. Haven said this; a couple of factors may predispose honey to crystallisation. This will usually include but not limited to

1.     Botanical origin or source of the honey, and by extension its glucose level and moisture content.

2.     Alternate heating and cooling especially with harvesting processing and packaging.

3.     The presence of about 180 substances excluding sugars may also be a factor

The highlights of this is that we should not tag a sample of honey as bad because it has white sediments at the bottom of the jar, what it simply means is that the honey contains a good amount of glucose which is actually a positive indication. Honey samples from plant sources such as Alfalfa, Cotton, Dandelion, Prune, Rape etc will readily crystallise as opposed to honey from plant sources such as Tupelo, Sunflower, Grape, Acacia, etc. Which will not.

The only reason which is not so very concrete; while you should not go for honey with crystals at the bottom of its jar is that the crystallisation may have been caused by alternate heating and cooling at temperatures above 70˚C. This would have killed most of honeys essential micro nutrients with leaves the honey as just a solution of sugar.

However to prevent your honey from crystallising please do not put you honey jar in refrigerators. Your honey will remain good at room temperature. It is important that your honey does not crystallise by cooling or induction because this increases the moisture content and encourages fermentation of the honey. So, please warm crystallised honey by placing your jar in hot water making sure the temperature does not exceed 70˚C and let it remain at room temperature.

On a good note, it is interesting to know that crystallised honey is even more expensive and of other uses such as bread spread in some regions. It is called cremed honey, having the texture of butter, wow! I am sure you will love it.

Now I sure you know will not throw away your crystallised honey, what is at the bottom is not sugar(sugar) which your doctor warns you About but it is Sugar(Glucose) which you need badly. Have a honey time.

http://www.honey.com/

Who or What is honey?

One of my lecturers at the University would always ask his question like this 'who or what is ...? I am sure some people might call a person 'honey' and others that sweet substance. I am sure this post will firther answer a couple of those question you have.


Honey is the natural sweet substance produced by honey bees from the nectar of plants or from secretions of living parts of plants or excretions of plant sucking insects on the living parts of plants, which the bees collect, transform by combining with specific substances of their own, deposit, dehydrate, store and leave in the honey comb to ripen and mature. 

Field honey bees collect flower nectar. On entering the hive with a full honey sac, which is an enlargement of the oesophagus, the field bee regurgitates the contents into the mouth of a young worker, called the house, or nurse, bee. The house bee deposits the nectar in a cell and carries out the tasks necessary to convert the nectar to honey. When the honey is fully ripened, the cell is sealed with an airtight wax capping. Both old and young workers are required to store the winter supplies of honey.

Nectar is averagely about 80% moisture and 20% sugars. The bees collect this and add to it several other components in their stomach as you must have noticed above that honey will qualify as bee vomit; Yook! Fear not, these substances are what make honey like no other sugar with such much to offer. They then will reduce the moisture content to about 20% and the sugars plus other beneficial substances to about 80%. 80/20 rule enh!

I may now in Chemistry registers define honey as a supersaturated solution. I would like you to keep this in mind as it will be the core of our discussion when we talk about honey and crystallization. You know that white stuff you see under your jar of honey when you store your honey slightly below room temperature.

What intrigues me most is the work that the bees have to do that I might enjoy just a spoonful of this sweet healthy substance. The average honey bee will actually make only one twelfth of a teaspoon of honey in its lifetime as it takes It takes about 556 workers to gather 1 pound (0.45359kg) of honey from about 2 million flowers. I guess we have so much to learn from

them when it comes to work ethics and even our social structure. Let us leave that for a rainy day.

It is healthy to know that honey contains only about 1.3% sucrose, 38% fructose and about 31% glucose. What this means is that honey is very okay for diabetic patients. There are so many other applications of honey for nutritional and preservative purposes. Its health benefits cannot be exhausted, ranging from ulcers to cosmetics to medicines just to mention a few. For those of us that are quite spiritual the holy books say it all.

In Matthew 3:4, John the Baptist is said to have lived for a long period of time in the wilderness on a diet consisting of locusts and wild honey.

In Islam, there is an entire Surah in the Qur'an called al-Nahl (the Honey Bee). According to hadith, Prophet Muhammad (SAW) strongly recommended honey for healing purposes. The Qur'an promotes honey as a nutritious and healthy food.

“And your Lord inspired the bee(s), saying: "Take your habitations in the mountains and in the trees and in what they erect. (68) Then, eat of all fruits, and follow the ways of your Lord made easy (for you)." There comes forth from their bellies, a drink of varying colour wherein is healing for mankind. Verily, in this is indeed a sign for people who think”

As good as it is there is one key don’t with honey, please DONT GIVE TO A BABY LESS THAN A YEAR OLD. It may cause a death. The presence of   endospores of the bacterium. I know especially in the Yoruba culture of Nigeria this will come with fierce resistance. I am yet to get samples of Nigerian honey to specialised labs that will help to identify this bacterium if it does exist in her honey samples.

http://www.royalbees.com/