Tell me Honey is pure or .....

[aamera]

I have honey about which i m not sure that it is pure or not.I hv doubt that it is made of sugar.How i can judge that?

[Skye]

It is not simply the sugar you buy in granules. That is just sucrose. It is a supersaturated mixture of mostly simple sugars like glucose and fructose, plus some proteins plus small amounts of other species. The actual composition varies between different bees and locations.

 

You could 'judge' it with regular analytical techniques, gas chromatography would probably sort out the sugars pretty well.

[ecoli]

Don't forgect digestive enzymes from the bees. Honey is made when honey bees eat plant nectar and than regurgitate it.

[Skye]

Yeah, they are included in proteins. I think there are also some antibiotic molecules in there, plus some vitamins, minerals, aa's, and molecules from whatever nector they've been to. I guess that would be mostly plant secondary metabolites that gives them different tastes.

[aamera]

Thanx all of u.But my helper at home who is a villager boy told me that put a small quantity of honey in a glass & then add water.If it dissolves without stirring then it is not pure honey but impure honey , having some amount of sugar added artificially by boiling in water

[John Cuthber]

I can't see how that would work. There's a compound found in most sugar syrups used to adulterate honey called hydroxymethy furfural, that isn't naturally present in honey.

[TATER]

I, myself am a beekeeper and all that i know about honey is that the stuff straight out of the hive is as pure as it gets. the honey you buy at the store(if it is a really cheap brand)is only made out of high fructose corn syrup and coloring agents depending on the type of honey that you buy.

[John Cuthber]

"the honey you buy at the store(if it is a really cheap brand)is only made out of high fructose corn syrup and coloring agents depending on the type of honey that you buy."

 

I doubt that because food products are usually quite well regulated and a product made like that simply wouldn't taste of honey.

I'm also left wondering if you really thought that we had been waiting since last October for your wisdom on this matter.

[ecoli]

I, myself am a beekeeper and all that i know about honey is that the stuff straight out of the hive is as pure as it gets. the honey you buy at the store(if it is a really cheap brand)is only made out of high fructose corn syrup and coloring agents depending on the type of honey that you buy.

"maple" syrup is certainly done this way, but not honey, AFAIK, for the reason already stated.

 

I am a beekeeper too, and will attest to the fact that honey right out of the hive, unpastuerized, is definately the best.

[TATER]

I know for sure hive honey is the best, but the next time you go to KFC ask for honey and look at the ingredients list

[John Cuthber]

I'd rather not go to KFC if you don't mind.

[satrohraj]

Actually Honey contains no sugar (may be a little, i am not sure)

It is a sweet liquid made in the crop (a temporary stomach like structure) using nectar as a raw material.

The nectar is mixed with saliva of honey bee in the 'crop'. aeowww!

But its nutritious.

 

So finally. The nectar goes inside the mouth. And later after sometime Honey comes out through the mouth itself

And there is not sugar in it.

[Norman Albers]

My bee farmer friends moved 500 hives around southern Oregon and mid-California, for different blooms of what were sometimes fields sprayed with chemicals. I have not heard this question addressed. Thinking on our market types, 'clover' and grass-like things may not be sprayed but fruit crops and grains may.

[John Cuthber]

"Actually Honey contains no sugar (may be a little, i am not sure)"

 

That's a matter of definition. Honey contains about 1% sucrose (ordinary cane or beet sugar) but, if you accept that glucose and fructose are sugars (and I think most people would), then it's about 75% "sugar".

 

I don't think grain crops atract bees, but the other flowering crops are often sprayed and the chemicals get into the honey. Since the quantities of these residues are low in the fruits etc that are being grown it's not unreasonable to hope that the levels of residual pesticides in the honey are also low.

[fredrik]

Thanx all of u.But my helper at home who is a villager boy told me that put a small quantity of honey in a glass & then add water.If it dissolves without stirring then it is not pure honey but impure honey , having some amount of sugar added artificially by boiling in water

 

I never tried that experiment, but just speculating here, it doesn't seem out of reason that

 

1) increasing the amount of simple sugars in relation to complex sugars and proteins

 

and

 

2) boiling the honey while adding/mixing in sugar (heat treatment)

 

Might possibly affect the binding properties of a clump of honey in water, and thus the rate of it dissolving in a glass of water.

 

But in either case it seems like a fuzzy or "crude" test. But since most of us do not have access to lab analysis some crude tests may work.

 

Moist level and reducing sugar content can be estimate at home though. I brew beer and I found out that there are a range of neat blood sugar meters on the market supposedly designed for diabetics. There are different brands that are based on different enzyme assays and some of them are specific to glucose, some react on many other reducing sugars. Including maltose and maltotriose that exists in brewers wort. I've had excellent use for these meters in brewing by combining the measurment, with a custom calibration, as well as a theoretical model in the typical relative sugar distribution of sugars in wort. My meter doesn't react on fructose or sucrose, but on glucose and some othre sugars. Perhaps a similar "dirty test" can be used to guesstimate the relative sugar distribution in honey. Obviously if the honey is not diluted as to maintain the natural fructose/glucose ratio, you could detect the fake honey by the relation between reducing sugar and density(moist).

 

However the blood sugar strips have high deviations so many tests are neede to get the uncertainty down.

 

I've used the same stuff to analyse commercial beer (at home that is, without nifty expensive lab equipment). The reducing sugar reading in relation to the gravity reveals the relative yeast attenuation, and sweetness of the beer via a set of estimated correlations.

 

/Fredrik

[Norman Albers]

 

I don't think grain crops atract bees, but the other flowering crops are often sprayed...quantities of these residues are low in the fruits etc that are being grown it's not unreasonable to hope that the levels of residuals are often sprayed and the chemicals get into the honey. .

 

The bees are mostly on the fresh-opened flowers, so timing of chemical spraying might be important.

[TATER]

If flowers were sprayed with pesticide, then they certainly would not have bees pollinating them because the honey would be contaminated with pesticide, would kill the bees, and would not be safe to consume

[Norman Albers]

You are experienced here, Tater, so you must have seen procedures at different orchards. I hope it is correct that spraying is done either early on tree wood or later on fruit. The flowers would be very much a fresh, fairly untainted yielding of nectar. Happy spring!

[chemhero]

It is not simply the sugar you buy in granules. That is just sucrose. It is a supersaturated mixture of mostly simple sugars like glucose and fructose, plus some proteins plus small amounts of other species. The actual composition varies between different bees and locations.

 

You could 'judge' it with regular analytical techniques, gas chromatography would probably sort out the sugars pretty well.

 

A little bit of GC-MS, methinks damn cool technique, almost taking over NMR in my favorite analytical methods..

 

Matt

[John Cuthber]

I'd just love to see someone putting sugar into a GC-MS- provided that Ididn't have to clean it afterwards. LCMS maybe, or a lot of messing about with derivatising agents.