Honey at Home
Learn about Honey
Honey is honey, it’s just that simple. A bottle of pure honey contains the natural sweet substance produced by honey bees from the nectar of plants or secretions of living parts of plants. Nothing else.
When scientists begin to look for all of the elements found in this wonderful product of nature, they find a complex of naturally flavored sugars as well as trace enzymes, minerals, vitamins, and amino acids. (Complete information concerning honey’s chemical makeup and nutritional content is available in our downloadable PDF brochure, “Honey, a Reference Guide to Nature’s Sweetener”).
Honey is made by bees in one of the world’s most efficient facilities, the beehive. The 60,000 or so bees in a beehive may collectively travel as much as 55,000 miles and visit more than two million flowers to gather enough nectar to make just a pound of honey!
The color and flavor of honey differ depending on the bees’ nectar source (the blossoms). In fact, there are more than 300 unique kinds of honey in the United States, originating from such diverse floral sources as Clover, Eucalyptus and Orange Blossoms. In general, lighter colored honeys are mild in flavor, while darker honeys are usually more robust in flavor.
How Honey is Made
How Honey is Made
Ever stop to think about what’s in a bottle of honey?
It’s really quite simple. There are no added preservatives. No added flavorings. No added coloring.
Take a look at the additive-free journey that honey takes from bee to bottle and see for yourself. The bottle of honey on your supermarket shelf is nothing more than honest to goodness sweetness the way nature intended.
The color, flavor, and even aroma of a particular variety of honey may differ depending on the nectar source of flowers visited by the honey bee. The colors may range from nearly colorless to dark brown, the flavor may vary from delectably mild to distinctively bold, and even the odor of the honey may be mildly reminiscent of the flower. Varietal honeys may be best compared to varietal wine in terms of annual climactic changes. Even...
Forms of Honey
Delicious Forms of Honey
Most of us know honey as a sweet, golden liquid. However, honey can be found in a variety of forms.
Comb honey is honey in its original form; that is, honey inside of the honeycomb. The beeswax comb is edible!
Cut comb honey is liquid honey that has added chunks of the honey comb in the jar. This is also known as a liquid-cut comb combination.
Free of visible crystals,...
Bees and Pollination
Honey Bees and Pollination
Why do Bees Make Honey?
Honeybees collect nectar and store it as honey in their hives. Nectar and honey provide the energy for the bees’ flight muscles and for heating the hive during the winter period. Honeybees also collect pollen which supplies protein for bee brood to grow.
Honey bees live in colonies that are often maintained, fed, and transported by beekeepers. Centuries of selective breeding by...