Sources and Values of Honey

George P. Walton.

A great number of flowering plants provide the nectars that bees gather, modify into honey, and store in combs. The nectars differ as the species of the plants differ. So honey, which is a natural, ready-made confection, is not a specific, uniform product. It varies from the pale-gold, mild-flavored honeys from fireweed and sweetclover to the strong-flavored, molasseslike honey from cultivated buckwheat.

To produce honey, the bee draws up the nectar from flowers and stores it in her honey sac while in the field. At the hive, the nectar is concentrated by the evaporation of water and deposited in open cells in comb. Here, more water is evaporated until, by the time the honey has become well ripened, the water content is only 18 percent or less. When the cell has been filled with ripened honey, it is sealed with a cap of wax. Such honey, with the cells in which it is contained, is called comb honey.

Section comb honey is capped comb honey in the thin wooden sections or frames in which it is produced. A section weighs 10 to 15 ounces, depending upon how well it is filled.

Extracted honey is liquid honey that has been separated from the uncrushed comb, usually by centrifugal force developed by whirling the uncapped (i. e., decapped) comb in an extractor. Liquid honey can be separated by gravity (by suspending macerated comb in a cotton jelly bag) or by pressing the honey out of the comb. Extracted honey is marketed in both liquid and crystallized forms.

Chunk honey, also called bulk-comb honey, packed chiefly in the Southeastern States, consists of pieces of comb honey surrounded by, or immersed in, liquid honey. Custom decrees that the weight of the comb honey shall equal not less than 40 percent of the total net weight. Some exception has been noted for packs in small-mouth jars, which do not readily admit that much comb.

Most of the honey of commerce is extracted. Extracting is done by the beekeeper, who strains the warm honey to remove particles of wax and other foreign matter. If it is to be stored or sold in bulk, the honey is usually transferred to 60-pound honey cans, much like the common rectangular 5-gallon oil can. Sometimes bulk honey is marketed in barrels.

The commercial floral-nectar types of honey, including natural blends, produced in this country number scarcely more than two score. Types produced in large quantities are few. Nearly 65 percent of our total honey crop is from the clovers and alfalfa. Contributions from the blossoms of lima beans, mesquite, and vetches raise the total from legumes to possibly 70 percent of the crop. Clover honeys and most of those from the other legumes have mild, pleasant flavors, and are comparatively light in color.

Honeys from orange and other citrus blossoms are produced in important volume, and, whether from California, Florida, or Texas, are prized because of their attractive flavor and aroma and pale to golden color. California sage honey and its natural blends are market favorites. Honey from tupelo, produced chiefly in swampy areas of Florida and Georgia, probably is our sweetest commercial honey and has a delicate, spicy flavor. Others prominent in the market are from basswood, buckwheat, cotton, and yellow-poplar, and a number of natural blends, such as those from wild berries and fall flowers.

Not all floral-nectar types of honey are suitable for the table. Several are unfit for food uses. Some, such as strong-flavored smartweed (Polygonum spp.) honey, have a restricted market, chiefly because of undesirable odor, which affects the flavor. A few, including mescal, bitterweed (Helenium tenuifolium, Nutt.), and chinquapin honeys, are unsalable in the natural state, the mescal because of its offensive odor, the other two because of intense bitterness. They are of use only as winter stores for the bees.

Even buckwheat honey a favorite with many who have grown up with it, or have acquired a liking for its rich, strong flavor is occasionally considered an inferior variety in the clover belt.

"Honeydew" honeys are not derived from floral nectar, but from various saccharine exudations, collected when nectar is scarce. They are characterized by a peculiar molasseslike or sorghum-like flavor and high dextrin content, and by having a dextrorotatory effect on polarized light, whereas floral honeys are levorotatory. They bear no relation to honeydew melon.

And, we must admit, a few honeys are actually poisonous. They are chiefly from species of Kalmla, Rhododendron, and Andromeda and from the yellow (false) jessamine. Fortunately, these seldom reach a market, because they are not ordinarily produced at a time or in sufficient quantities for harvesting and because of the vigilance of the beekeepers. At least one of these Poisonous honeys was known to antiquity. L. F. Kehler (1896) cites a Passage from the Anabasis, Book 4, in which Xenophon in his account of the retreat of the ten thousand in 400 B. C., described the disastrous but not fatal effects on his soldiers from eating honey produced in mountainous country south of the Black Sea. Scientists have concluded that the honey came from one or two species of Rhododendron.

THE ANNUAL WORLD production of honey is estimated at more than 800 million pounds. The 10 highest producers are believed to be the United States, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Germany as of 1939, Spain, Canada, Australia, France, United Kingdom, Cuba, and Argentina. Poland, Mexico, and Turkey also produce a great deal of honey.

Production of honey in the United States has been mounting in recent years. It reached 233 million pounds in 1945, nearly 214 million in 1946, and more than 228 million in 1947, when the value (based on prices for "all honey" received by beekeepers) was more than 57 million dollars. The comparable valuation of the 1949 production of nearly 227 million pounds dropped to less than 35 million dollars. In 1945, allowing for imports and exports, more than 254 million pounds was available for consumption.

RECENT INCREASES in the annual production of honey in the United States have been due chiefly to expansion in the number of colonies of bees, which was stimulated by short supplies of sugar and comparatively good prices for honey. Also, increases in bee population were sought for better pollination of legumes grown for seed, many fruits, and some vegetables. But greater numbers of bees have provided more honey; also, since the end of the Second World War, ample supplies of sugar and other sweets have again become available. These developments contributed to a notable surplus of extracted honey ( especially of the darker, stronger-flavored varieties) from the 1947 crop and a reported stock on hand in January 1948 of approximately 27 percent of the 1947 production. The reported stocks carried over into the calendar years 1949 and 1950 were even larger. Aware of the need to maintain our bee population at a high level for adequate pollination of seed crops and realizing that the beekeepers' compensation derives chiefly from the sale of the honey, the Department of Agriculture has undertaken a search for new market outlets for extracted honey.

We have no accurate statistics from the industry on the disposal of the annual honey crop. But reliable estimates place the normal consumption of extracted honey in the homes of this country at 45 to 50 percent of the total. About 15 percent more is directly consumed as section comb and bulk-comb honey. Much of the extracted honey is sold as a finely crystallized spread in cardboard containers.

The remaining 35 to 40 percent of the total crop, all of it extracted, is consumed in various food or other industries. This honey is marketed wholesale, chiefly in 60-pound cans. Nearly 25 percent, or about 50 million pounds a year, is used by the baking industry. Most of the remaining 10 to 15 percent is used in the manufacture of confectionery, ice cream, beverages, alcoholic liquors, honey-cured hams, fruit products, vinegars, and sirups. Some nonfood uses are in chewing tobacco, as a moisture-holding agent in cigarettes, and in cosmetics. Honey has been used as a heavy and incompressible fluid center for golf balls.

THE AVERAGE composition of definitely floral-nectar honey, based on Charles A. Browne's 78 analyses of 33 floral-nectar types, is : Moisture, 17.7 percent; total sugars, 76.4 percent ( comprising levulose, 40.5 percent, dextrose, 34.0 percent; and sucrose, 1.9 percent) ; ash, 0.18 percent; dextrin, 1.5 percent; and total acid (as formic acid), 0.08 percent; leaving 4.1 percent undetermined. The ratio of levulose to dextrose is 1.16 to 1.

The analyses show extracted honey to be inherently a sirup of mixed sugars, for it is 92 to 98 percent sugars and water. As its chief sugars are levulose (also called fructose or fruit sugar)and dextrose (grape sugar), with only comparatively small amounts of sucrose (ordinary table sugar), honey is sometimes referred to as essentially an invert sugar sirup. Invert sugar consists of levulose and dextrose in equal amounts.

But honey is far more than just a concentrated invert sugar sirup. Besides providing a variety of attractive flavors and 2 to 8 percent of substances other than sugars and water, true floral-nectar honeys contain appreciably more levulose than dextrose. Exceptions are infrequent and negligible. This preponderance of the levulose is marked in several commercial honeys (among them those from tupelo, black and purple sage, and fireweed) and is of practical significance. It accounts for the greater sweetening power of the sugars of average honey in comparison with either granulated sugar or invert sugar. and for the notable moisture-absorbing property of honey. Also, a high ratio of levulose to dextrose tends to prevent or at least to retard granulation, or sugaring, meaning the separation of crystals of dextrose hydrate from the liquid honey.

Its comparative sweetening power is of importance to the industrial user, when honey is to be used in other food products. Different results noted in comparing the sweetness of honey with that of sucrose in various products may be explained partly by the effect of other ingredients of the mixtures tested. For example, a particular honey may appear to have a higher relative sweetening power in a plain sirup or candy than in ice cream.

Honey has the following general values: One gallon of average honey contains slightly more than 9 pounds of total sugars. Theoretically, its sweetening power is equivalent to approximately 11.25 pounds of granulated sugar or to 1.67 gallons (measured volume) of this sugar. One pound of average honey has about the same sweetening power as 0.95 pound ( 15.25 ounces) of sugar. The energy value of 1 pound of this honey is 1,480 calories, while that of the same weight of sugar is 1,805 calories. The minor constituents of honey include: Ash, or mineral matter; dextrin, which is more gumlike than starch dextrins; acids; and substances for which the quantitative determination is difficult and which make up the undetermined fraction.