Honey has centuries of history as a medicine and a food and I'm sure you have a few recipes of your own where honey is your secret ingredient to a special dish or sauce.   But, do you know how bees make honey?

When you see a bee flying from flower to flower, what she is doing is collecting nectar by putting it in her "second stomach" where it starts the enzymatic process. 

She then brings it back to the hive where other worker bees distribute it to their young or store it for their future food supply.

At the hive, "fanning bees" dehydrate and preserve the stored nectar by flapping their wings to reduce moisture content.  The individual cells of the comb are then sealed with beeswax, a secretion the bees synthesize with the help of honey to safely preserve their food supply.

Beekeepers then take some of the hives that are ready with honey.  They blow the bees out of the hives with something that looks like a leaf blower.  This sends the bees out of their current homes and to other hives that are part of their community.

To process the beehives, the beekeepers scrape the "caps" that the bees constructed to preserve the honey off the honeycombs.  The extract honey is then heated and strained.  Some honey is pressure filtered to remove all the pollen, but raw honey, for instance, will have lots of pollen left.  You'll notice some honey becomes "crystallized" faster than others, this is due to the higher pollen content.

Some fun honey facts

• It takes about 2 million flowers and over 55,000 miles of flight to make a single pound of honey.
• A typical hive can produce 60-100 pounds of honey per year.
• Theoretically, the energy in one ounce of honey would provide one bee with enough energy to fly around the world.
• Bees possess five eyes and can see ultraviolet colors, but not red.
• In 1984, honeybees constructed a honeycomb in zero gravity as part of an experiment on a space shuttle.
• The ancient Greeks minted coins with bees on them.

What about the nutrition of honey?

Honey is sugar.

Its composition is 17.1% water and 82.4% carbohydrate comprised of fructose (38%), glucose (31%), and the remaining 12.9% is maltose, sucrose, etc. 

Honey is about 25% sweeter than white table sugar, which means ideally you use less for the same amount of sweet taste.  That said, there are 300 kinds of honey available in the US alone.  They all smell and taste different!  If there is a specific kind of honey you like, check out the "honey locator", www.honeylocator.com, to find it.

Honey also has trace amounts of antioxidants (4-8 times the amount in corn syrup).

Bee decline

Today, wild bees, as well as commercially raised bees are in danger. Over the past two decades, the honeybee, the world's premier pollinator, experienced a 40% decline, from nearly six million to less than two and a half million hives.  With wild bees in such decline, crops like almonds and cherries are now pollinated by trucked-in "commercially grown" bees.

The decline of honeybees impacts much more than almonds, cherries, and honey.  Of the world's 250,000 flowering plants, 75% of them - including many fruits and vegetables - require pollination to reproduce.  Think of all the flowering plant foods you eat everyday; citrus fruits, nuts and vegetables like asparagus, broccoli, squash, cucumbers and beans just to name a few that rely on bees to pollinate.  This large decline, and in some cases disappearance and death of entire colonies of bees is thought to be, at least in part, due to overuse of pesticides, disappearance of habitat and modern intensive farming practices.

Look for local honey and remember to plant flowers in your yard or in pots on your deck to help the bees, they are a very important part of our world and they need all the flowers we can offer to them!  

About the Nutritionist

Amyjo Johnson has a Bachelors of Science in Human Nutrition and is currently working on her Certification and Masters in Nutrition through the nationally accredited American Health Science University and the National Institute of Nutrition Education.  For two years, Amyjo has been providing nutrition consulting to the on-site food service team and employees at Google, Inc. She provides information on assuring nutritionally balanced menus, excellent ingredients, and food choice nutritional education for ideal productivity and health. Through her company, Food for Change, Amyjo provides individuals and businesses counseling and consultation on a variety of nutritional situations and needs.  Contact her at:  This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it