Bee Honey Properties And Uses-1

Raw honey health benefits

Honey is the foodstuff produced by honey bees from the flowers nectar or from secretions of plants' living parts or excretions from plant sucking insects that remaining upon plants living parts, which the bees collect transform, combine with own specific substances, store and leave to ripen in the hive's combs.

Honey types
Honey will always have different appearances, textures, flavors and aromas, in each case always go together with a floral origin defined, for that reason honeys are classified by their botanical origin, for which we have a first major division:


A) - Flower honey
It is honey obtained mainly from flowers' nectar. It is distinguished by:

• Unifloral honeys or monofloral honey : If the product comes primarily from the flowers' source of the same family, genus or species and possesses own sensory characteristics and physicochemical and microscopic.

• Multi floral honey or poly floral or multifloral honey: in its composition we find the nectar  from several plant species without any be considered dominant.

B) - honeydew honey
It is honey obtained mainly from secretions of plants living parts or excretions of plant sucking insects found on them.


Composition
It can be considered to honey as an aqueous dispersion of particles of very different sizes, since inorganic ions and sugars in solution  and protein'smacromolecules in colloidal dispersion to pollen grains from flora.


Also contains a complex mixture of other carbohydrates, enzymes, amino acids ,organic acids, minerals, aroma substances, pigments, wax and pollen grains.


Within its composition are identified 181 different substances in honey, some of these are exclusive.
* Carbohydrates: 75-80 % The main sugars in honey are fructose, approx. 35-40% , glucose, about 30-35%.

* Other sugars include disaccharides such as sucrose, about 5-10%), maltose, melezitose and trisaccharide.

* Water: 15-20 %.

* Proteins : Up 0.40 % , seven of these are incorporated by bees as enzymes to nectar transform into honey and two are from vegetable origin.

* Minerals : Up to 1 % : Potassium, calcium, sodium, magnesium, silicon, phosphorus.

* Trace elements: there are numerous studies that show a large trace elements  amount such as zinc, molybdenum, iodine, etc.

* Vitamins: Vit A, Folic Acid , Pantothenic Acid , B2 , B6 , B12 , biotin , C , D , K , niacin and thiamine.
Calories : 3.3 kcal / g