Being a natural product, honey varies in composition enormously but, essentially, it is a fluid, viscous or crystallized substance, produced by bees from the nectar of blossoms that bees collect, transform or combine with substances of their own, which they then store and leave to mature.
Its main components are water and sucrose. Sucrose is composed of glucose and fructose, and it is the glucose-to-fructose ratio that determines some of honey’s most noticeable physical characteristics, such as how long it will take to crystallize, for example. Water is always present in honey, and the amount is critical to the beekeeper when processing or storing extracted honey.
The beekeeper should always check their honey to ensure that this moisture/water presence is within bounds. The moisture/water content should be less than 19% in other to meet international standard for quality honey. The more reason a beekeeper should not expose harvested honey to moisture because honey is hygroscopic in nature. It can easily attract and absorb moisture. Hence, it should be stored in an airtight container.
A more detailed definition of the composition of honey would be as follows:
- Honey is composed mainly of sugars and water.
- The average honey is 79.6% sugar and 17.2% water. The main sugars are fructose (38.2%) and glucose (31.3%).
- Other sugars include maltose (7.3%) and sucrose (1.3%).
- Honey also contains acids (.57%), protein (.26%), a small amount of minerals (.17%) and a number of other minor components, including pigments, flavour and aroma substances, colloids and vitamins. This group of materials constitutes about 2.2% of the total composition.
It should be noted that the sugars mentioned here are natural because honeybees obtained them from flowering plants and not the same with synthetic sugar being used in homes.
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