Honey – Sweet Liquid Obtained by Bees

Honey is a sweet sticky liquid obtained by bees and other insects from flowers. Honey as food, or taken home to store as food for the young. The honeybee collects and stores this substance in its hive, leading to bee culture. Honey is highly nutritive, especially as a fuel for the body’s energies, as four-fifths of its components are carbohydrates, the remainder being water with a trifle of protein.

The saccharine elements are mainly grape-sugar and some fruit-sugar, which are so readily affected by yeast that various fermented drinks are made with honey as their basis, of which the best known are the mead and metheglin in great demand among all Teutonic peoples a thousand years ago, and the equivalents of which are still made in Russia, Abyssinia and elsewhere. Before the general manufacture and use of cane sugar, honey was largely used for sweetening, and was put into a significant number of cakes and confections now rare or only locally manufactured.

Honey was indeed, much more important to the ancients than to us; as might be inferred from its frequent mention in the Bible as a sign of abundance or the resource of the destitute. It has well-recognized medicinal properties, especially as a demulcent against hoarseness, catarrh, etc., in promoting expectoration in breast disorders, and as an ingredient in cooling and detergent gargles. Its effect is usually laxative as well.

It is used to sweeten certain medicines; and is sometimes mixed with vinegar in the proportion of two pounds of clarified honey to one pint of acetic acid. It is boiled down to a proper consistency over a slow fire and thus forms the oxymel simple of the shops. It is included in the composition of various sweetmeats, such as Oriental nougat. Its use in confections in the United States has increased significantly as a result of the sugar shortages in 1917 and 1918, and importation has become a considerable business. Honey’s properties, flavor and color vary with the flowers from which it is made.

Thus, in Europe, the white Narbonne honey of France owes its peculiar and delicious flavor to the rosemary and other labiate flowers (Lamiaceae) on which the bees feed. Grecian honey is also considered to be among the best. Mount Hymettus in Attica has been famous since classical times for this product. However, honey derived from the time-covered hills of Corinth excels it. Another famous ancient supply source was Sicily, especially Mount Hybla. Corsica is still celebrated for its honey and wax, which in ancient times were the chief exports of that island.

In the eastern United States, the early light-colored honey obtained from white clover is especially esteemed; also, that derived from raspberry plantations, bass-wood flowers, and the like; while that made later in the summer from buckwheat is in favor among darker varieties. California is one of the largest producers of honey from various flowers.

This ensures the aromatic pleasant flavors and healthful benefits of special flowers (fortunately in most cases). In the case of ordinary high-quality honey, certain noxious qualities are retained and spoil some honey. This becomes deleterious to the human system, acting as a nauseant, a purgative, affecting the nerve centers or even seriously poisoning those who eat it. This is the case in the United States with honey made from mountain laurel flowers (Kahnia) and other toxic plants. Some persons cannot eat any kind of honey, without disarrangement of digestion or nerves, or both; and all should use it in moderation.

Beekeeping is the industry that supplies honey demand. Modern hives are so constructed that the bees build separate combs each filling a box with glass sides. These combs are taken out and sent to market as soon as the bees finish them. Another method of marketing is in the form of “strained” honey, the liquid pressed from the comb after warming, through linen cloth sieves, or by other means.

There is no reason why this should not be as good as that left in the comb if properly prepared and preserved. It permits saving the comb material for wax; but it also makes adulteration possible, which is freely taken advantage of. The chief adulterant is commercial glucose, which is sometimes substituted for three-fourths of the volume, leaving only enough real honey to flavor the mass. As glucose (grape-sugar) is a large constituent of this substance in nature no significant harm results (when the glucose is healthy), beyond deception; and wholly artificial honey has been largely sold in the past as a bee product.

Of the place which it took among the ancients in the household, in ceremonials, worship and for lore a large amount of curious information may be gathered from such books as Beckman’s ‘History of Invention’ (1846); Dutt’s ‘Materia Medica of the Hindoos’ (1877), and similar works, of which lists may be found in Warring’s ‘Bibliography of Therapeutics’ (1868), and in the ‘Catalogue of the United States Army Medical Museum.’

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