Honey Information

Over 88% of New Zeanders eat honey!
71% of New Zeanders believe honey is nutritionally better than sugar.
84% of New Zeanders believe honey is one of the most natural foods available.

What is Honey?

Ancient cave drawings show that honey has been used as a food by man for at least 20,000 years.  To many people, honey is just a sweet substance collected by bees.  Honey is, however, a complex substance that varies appreciably in its composition.

Honey starts out as a very thin, watery sugary fluid, known as nectar.  Nectar is found in the nectaries of plants, which are usually located in the base of the flowers.  Nectar varies considerably in its sugar, protein, mineral and water content from one kind of plant to another.

In a honey bee's quest for a single load of honey, she may visit anything from 500 to 1100 blossoms of a particular species of plant.  In her lifetime the honey bee will fly approximately 800 kilometres and produce just half a teaspoon of honey; it takes approximately 2.5 million kilometres of flying by the bees in a hive to produce one litre of honey.

Inside the bee, the nectar is stored in a tiny compartment, known as the honey sac.  This sac is like a little plastic bag fitted with a one way valve.  Stored enzymes and juices in the sac convert the sucrose (disaccharide) to more simple sugars (mono-saccharides).  It is upon this conversion that nectar becomes known as honey, consisting mainly of two simple sugars, dextrose and levulose.

The enzymes which play the main part in converting the nectar are:

• Invertase - which brings about the change in the sucrose to dextrose and levulose
• Diastase - which converts starch to the dextrines
• Catalose - which decomposes hydrogen peroxide
• Phosphates - which decompose aglycerophaste

The “unripe honey”, as the honey in the honey bee’s sac is called, is passed by the honey bee to a worker bee at the hive.  The “unripe honey” is dried by bees exposing it as a thin film to the warm dry currents in the hive.  When no more than 18-20% of water remains, the now “ripened honey” is sealed in a cell with a wax cap; where it is left to mature and finish its ripening process.

At this stage it can be harvested by the beekeeper or eaten by the bee colony as food.

What is the difference between creamed and liquid honey?

Creamed honey is a controlled crystallisation process that is used extensively in New Zealand due to our cooler climate.  The honey is still exactly the same as liquid honey; just the crystals are different (a bit like water and ice).  If you were to heat the creamed honey to above 25oC, it would become liquid honey again.  Nothing is added to the honey to make it creamy; many overseas customers assume there is icing sugar in it – maybe in their countries honey is not so pure.