Apitherapy (the use of bee products in complementary medicine) is an irreplaceable natural food source, which has been consumed by humanity for thousands of years, which has a place in many areas from recipes, drinks to desserts … Well, sometimes we mix it with our drinks, sometimes we eat for breakfast, and sometimes when our sweet crisis comes. How much do we know about this valuable nutrient we spooned into?

Apitherapy (the use of bee products in complementary medicine) is an irreplaceable natural food source, which has been consumed by humanity for thousands of years, which has a place in many areas from recipes, drinks to desserts … Well, sometimes we mix it with our drinks, sometimes we eat for breakfast, and sometimes when our sweet crisis comes. How much do we know about this valuable nutrient we spooned into?

In this article, we have briefly explained the production process of honey and its arrival at our tables for those who want to have general information on the subject. If you want to learn more about this miracle of bees, read on!

Making Bees Honey

If we are going to talk about honey making, we should of course start with the flowers, bees and the hive. Flowering plants secrete a sweet liquid known as nectar (nectar is the source of honey). Foraging bees (worker bees) store the nectar they collect from flowers in an area known as “honey stomach” in their bodies. The honey stomach is a separate area from the stomach used by the bee for digestion. The bees collecting the nectar then transfer this material to the worker bees in the hive. Worker bees take back the nectar they take from foraging bees for a while – on average 15 minutes – and drink it again. During this process, the bees’ secretions containing certain enzymes mix into the structure of the nectar, transforming into sucrose, glucose, fructose and other oligosaccharides found in the nectar. In the next step, the worker bees in the hive, They beat their wings very quickly to blow the moisture of the honey and provide ventilation in the hive. Thus, honey matures.

One of the important features of real honey is that it has a very low water content. The moisture of ripe honey should be below 20%.

It takes an average of 1 – 3 days for the nectar in the hive to turn into honey.

Before we move on to the next step, here are a few interesting facts:

Honey can only be produced by female bees. The duty of drones is to reproduce and continue the generation.

– Worker bees, who blend the content taken from the flowers with their enzymes and fill them into the combs, visit the flowers 180,000 times on average to produce 1 gram of honey.

The amount of honey that a bee can collect in its short life is 1/12 of an average teaspoon.

– Bees that make honey are strong enough to fly nectar more than their own weight.

From Honeycombs to Table …

After the miracle of nature takes place as we mentioned above, as you can imagine, people step in. After the bees are full and the honeys mature, they coat the combs with beeswax. In the process known as “honey harvesting”, beekeepers remove the combs from the hive and scrape the honeycombs to collect it (unglazed honey is considered immature). Then the honeycomb honey is filtered by the beekeeper from the combs in the filter mill. The next stage is the process of shipping the honey to the honey packaging facility.

After the bees are full and the honeys mature, they coat the combs with beeswax. In the process known as “honey harvest”, beekeepers remove the combs from the hive and scrape the honeycombs to collect it (unglazed honey is considered immature). Then the honeycomb honey is filtered by the beekeeper from the combs in the straining mill. The next stage is the process of shipping the honey to the honey packaging facility.

The pure honey in pakistan that reaches the facility from the beekeeper is sampled on a beekeeper basis and its quality and compliance with food safety are analyzed in the laboratory for quality control purposes. If the honey complies with BEEO quality standards, in other words, if it is 100% natural, pure, additive-free, residue-free, it can be packaged for delivery to the consumer.

Raw Honey

Finally, it is necessary to briefly touch upon what is meant by “raw honey”. Honey, which is a very valuable bee product obtained from the hive, must be pasteurized and unfiltered “raw honey” in order to be able to talk about its benefits. In this way, it is possible to preserve the natural nutrient content of honey. Processes such as pasteurization and filtration on honey are applied for reasons such as preventing crystallization (solidification of honey) and cause a decrease in naturally occurring pollens, vitamins, enzymes, phenolics and flavonoids in honey. Honey has the highest nutritional value when presented raw and is a completely natural product. BEE’O offers its honey varieties to consumers only as raw honey.