Honey may be contaminated by botulinum toxin during the brewing, transportation and storage process. More than 80% of honey is sugar.
Honey is a supersaturated solution of sugar. It will crystallize at low temperatures. It is glucose that will crystallize, and the part that does not crystallize is mainly fructose.
According to the source
We know that when bees brew honey, the source of the "processed materials" it collects is mainly nectar from the nectar source, but when the nectar source is lacking, bees will also collect nectar or honeydew. Therefore, we divide honey into natural honey and nectar honey. .
Natural honey
Natural honey is brewed by bees collecting nectar from flowers. They are derived from the inner or outer nectaries of plants. Usually what we call honey is natural honey. Because it comes from different nectar plants, it is divided into a variety of single-flower nectars, such as oranges. Nectar, linden honey, lychee honey, acacia honey, milk vetch honey, rape honey, date nectar, wild osmanthus honey, longan honey, wild chrysanthemum honey, wolf tooth honey, etc.
Although bees collect nectar from only one plant at a certain period, most honey often contains pollen or nectar from several types of plants. For example: Southern lychee flowers are followed by longan flowers at the end of flowers, and rapeseed flowers are followed by purple clouds at the end of them. The English blooms, so the longan honey must contain lychee honey, and the milk vetch honey must have a small amount of rape honey in the early stage. Under normal circumstances, honey is named after one or several main sources of flower names. Generally speaking, a certain single nectar is the absolute predominance of the pollen percentage of the nectar source plant. For example, in the northeast linden tree honey, the linden tree pollen should have an absolute predominance, and the honey is white and white. But there are also honey obtained by many plants blooming at the same time, because it has more than two kinds of pollen mixed together, it is generally called hybrid nectar, or "Hundred Flower" honey.
Before people knew about nectar plants, they only divided honey into spring honey, summer honey, autumn honey and winter honey according to the production season.
Nectar honey
Manna honey is the honey brewed by honeydew or insect metabolites (ie manna) collected by bees from the leaves or stems of plants. Excess sugar and water are excreted and sprinkled on plant branches and leaves, and bees use it as a raw material to brew nectar honey.
According to the physical state
Under normal temperature and pressure, honey has two different physical states, liquid and crystalline (whether the honey is stored in the nest or separated from the nest). Liquid honey is a liquid that separates the honey from the honeycomb and remains transparent or translucent and viscous. However, most varieties of honey gradually form a crystalline state after being placed for a period of time, especially when the temperature is low, so that the honey is called crystalline honey.
Crystallization is because the glucose contained in honey is easy to crystallize, so crystalline honey does not reduce its nutritional value and the nature of natural food. It is a pure physical phenomenon.
Crystal honey can be divided into large crystals, small crystals and greasy crystals due to the different sizes of crystals. The crystal particles with a diameter greater than 0.5 microns are large crystals; those with a particle diameter less than 0.5 microns are small crystals; the crystal particles are very small and seem to be Homogeneous, called greasy crystals or greasy crystals.
According to the production method
According to the different production methods of producing honey, it can be divided into separated honey, nest honey, squeezed honey and so on.
Separate honey
Separating honey, separating heart honey or squeezing honey, is to remove the honey spleen from the honeycomb, place it in a honey shaker, shake out and filter the honey through the action of centrifugal force, or separate it from the honey spleen by squeezing the honeycomb spleen Come out and filter the honey. This kind of fresh honey is generally in a transparent liquid state. Some separated honey will crystallize after a period of time. For example, rape honey will crystallize soon after being taken out, and some separated honey will crystallize after a period of time at low temperature.
Nest honey
Comb honey, also known as lattice honey, uses the biological characteristics of bees to brew honey blocks with honey in a standardized honeycomb. Comb honey not only has the effect of separating honey, but also has the characteristics of a honeycomb. It is a kind of honey. Known as high-end natural honey products. People can produce single honey in different formats according to the nectar flow patterns of nectar plants and the habit of bees to cover the honey spleen. A nest frame can be divided into 4, 8 or 12 blocks. Experiments have proved that as long as the external source of nectar is sufficient, no matter the size of the square, bees can build spleen, fill honey, and seal. The larger the area of the single nugget, the faster the capping.
The comb honey sold in the market is made of transparent and non-toxic hard plastic to make lattices of different sizes and shapes, or the whole honey spleen with a lid is sealed with a knife to cut the honey into a certain shape and packed in a hard plastic box. Make a nest frame of a certain format, then insert a small piece of nest foundation into the grid, put it into the nest frame and put it into the honey group, let the bees build the spleen, store honey, and seal the honeycomb into the grid. Double-sided and single-sided, after brewing the nest honey that meets the specifications, the mature nest honey block is removed, boxed and packaged, and it becomes the commodity nest honey on the market.
Squeezed honey
Squeezed honey is the honey obtained by the old method of beekeeping and harvesting wild honey.
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