Honey
Sweet substance produced by bees for colony nourishment.
Honey is a sweet and viscous substance made by several species of bees, the best-known of which are honey bees. Bees produce and store honey as a food source to nourish their colonies, gathering sugary secretions from plants, primarily floral nectar, or from other insects such as the honeydew of aphids. This refinement occurs through regurgitation and enzymatic activity within individual bees, and during storage in the hive through water evaporation, which concentrates the sugars until the substance is thick and viscous. Honey bees stockpile honey in a structure made of beeswax called honeycomb, composed of hundreds or thousands of hexagonal cells into which they regurgitate honey. Other species, like stingless bees, store honey in pots made of wax and resin. Honey is sweet due to high concentrations of the monosaccharides fructose and glucose, with a relative sweetness similar to table sugar. Its high sugar concentration and acidic pH prevent most microorganisms from growing, so properly stored honey does not spoil; archaeological samples have remained edible for millennia. Human consumption of honey dates to prehistoric times, with cave paintings in Spain depicting foraging at least eight thousand years ago. While the honey bee is an Old World insect, large-scale cultivation of New World stingless bees was practiced by Mayans before the arrival of Columbus. The husbandry of bees is known as beekeeping or apiculture, with stingless bee cultivation called meliponiculture. Honey has attractive chemical properties for baking and a distinctive flavor as a sweetener. During foraging, bees use part of collected nectar to power flight, but most is destined for long-term storage as honey, which is many times more energy-dense than the original nectar. The water content of nectar is typically seventy to eighty percent, while finished honey usually contains around eighteen percent water.
- produced_by
- Several bee species, including honey bees (Apis mellifera) and stingless bees
- primary_use
- Food for bee colonies and human consumption
- key_components
- Fructose and glucose monosaccharides
- water_content
- 15.5% to 18% in finished honey
- shelf_life
- Indefinite if water content remains below about 18%
Lore & Background
Honey is produced by bees that collect nectar or honeydew. Foraging bees use a proboscis to draw sugary fluids into a honey stomach, where salivary enzymes begin breaking complex sugars into simpler ones. The bee then returns to the hive and regurgitates the nectar to hive bees, who repeatedly form bubbles between their mandibles to evaporate water and concentrate the sugars. This process can take up to 20 minutes of continuous regurgitation, digestion, and evaporation. The honey is then placed in honeycomb cells, where bees generate heat to maintain a hive temperature around 35 °C, further evaporating water until the honey reaches a final water content of 15.5% to 18%. At this concentration, the sugars are supercooled and microbiological reproduction is halted. Bees then cap the cells with wax to seal the honey.
Reader's Guide
Its high sugar concentration and acidic pH prevent spoilage, allowing archaeological samples to remain edible after millennia. Honey is produced commercially worldwide, primarily by honey bees, and is used as a sweetener with distinctive flavor and chemical properties for baking. The husbandry of bees is known as beekeeping or apiculture, while cultivation of stingless bees is called meliponiculture, practiced by Mayans since pre-Columbian times. Humans have semi-domesticated honey bees by exploiting their swarming behavior, providing artificial hives such as the Langstroth hive. Honey's energy density makes it valuable for bees during lean periods like overwintering, and for humans as a food source.
Did You Know?
- Honey is a supercooled solution of sugars in water, with a final water content between 15.5% and 18%.
- A foraging bee's honey stomach holds about 40 mg of liquid, requiring visits to over a thousand flowers to fill.
- Honey does not spoil when properly stored; samples from archaeological contexts have proven edible after millennia.
- Some wasp species, such as Brachygastra lecheguana, also produce honey.
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