HONEY, a sweet viscid liquid, elaborated by honey-bees from nectar obtained by them chiefly from the nectaries of flowers, and after transportation to the hive in the honey-stomach, ripened into honey and finally deposited into the cells of their combs prepared for this storage. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has defined honey for purposes of preventing adulteration in the following terms : "Honey is the nectar and saccharine exudations of plants, gathered, modified, and stored in the combs by honey bees (Apis mellifica) ; is laevo-rotatory, contains not more than 25% of water, not more than 0.25% of ash, and not more than 8% of sucrose." This official definition, largely expressed as limi tations in the quantities of materials normally found in honeys, does not attempt to itemize all the materials found in honeys but only those which are of greatest importance in detecting sophisti cation of this product. By this definition, only honey produced by the common honey-bee is properly designated honey, even that of the other species of Apis being excluded. This is due to the fact that the honey of A. dorsata, zonata, indica and others does not enter U.S. markets. Honey gathered by other species of insects is equally excluded by the definition for the same reason. The same limitations apply to honey in practically all European coun tries. Further official definitions are given of comb-honey, ex tracted honey (removed from the comb by centrifugal force) and strained honey (removed by squeezing or the application of heat by the older methods of bee-keeping). Some species of wasps, the honey-ants of Texas and Mexico, and some other ants not only collect nectar as food, but store it for later use by various means. These cases are of biological interest but the honeys thus produced are not used as human food except in certain cases where Mexican Indians are said to collect the stores of the honey-ants.
It was formerly a popular saying in some temperate regions (as England) that where there is the best honey there also is the best wool, a pastoral region often affording a greater profusion of nec tar-secreting flowers than lands under tillage. Dry weather with cool nights and hot days is that usually most favourable to the secretion of nectar. In most European countries, nectar is ob tained largely from plants growing wild in their native habitat, but in America, where the honey-bee is not native, the larger part of the marketed honey crop is derived from cultivated and to a con siderable degree from imported plants. Nectar is often protected in the flowers from rain and other adverse factors by special morphological structures of great complexity. The odour of flowers was formerly associated with the presence of nectar, but now this is not held to be true, since many flowers possess strong odours without ever containing nectar, while others overflow with nectar without giving forth an odour perceptible to man.
The exudation of a nectar-like or saccharine fluid is a function exclusively of flowers but may be found as a secretion or excretion on all parts of various plants which occur above ground. A sweet material, manna, is produced by leaves and stems of a species of ash, and nectar-secreting glands are found on leaves, petioles, stipules, bracts and even on the outer surfaces of corollas and calyces of various plant species. The origin of nectar-secretion manifested specially by flowers among the several parts of plants has been carefully considered by Darwin, who regards the sac charine matter in nectar as a waste product of chemical changes in the sap, which, when it happens to be excreted within the envel opes of flowers, is utilized for the important object of cross fertilization, and subsequently is much increased in quantity and stored in various ways (see Cross and Self Fertilization of Plants, P. 402 et seq., 1876). It has been noted with respect to the nectar of various species of plants that it is most abundant when the anthers are about to dehisce and absent in the unexpanded flower. Bonnier showed that in most flowering plants there occurs an ac cumulation of soluble food in the form of sugars at the bases of flowers to act as a quick food supply immediately after fertiliza tion occurs, and in some species there is regularly a secretion of this sugar supply in the form of nectar, while the majority of flow ering plants form no such secretion regularly but may do so under unusual environmental conditions. The secretions or excretions of nectar from parts of plants other than the interior of flowers are commonly called plant honey-dews.
Another important source of sweet liquid for honey-bees is the excretions of many species of sucking insects, these being called insect honey-dews to distinguish them from normal plant secretions. Various orders of Hemiptera form this material which is eagerly gathered by bees, but only when no supplies of nectar are available. These insects vary in their locations on plants and often confine themselves to certain plant species. The insects extract the sap from leaves or stems, utilize what is needed for their own livelihood and excrete the residue, which often contains considerable quantities of sugars. Insect honey-dews contain the same sugars that occur in nectars and approximately in the same proportions, but the final product made from these materials by bees contains considerably larger quantities of dextrin, more ash and usually has a dark colour and none too attractive flavour. Plant secretions from parts of plants other than flowers also may contain more dextrin and ash and may have stronger flavours.
Pettigrew is of opinion that few bees go more than 2 m. from home in search of honey. The number of blossoms visited in order to meet the requirements of a single hive of bees must be very great; for it has been found by A. S. Wilson that 125 heads of common red clover, which is a plant comparatively abundant in nectar, yield but one gramme (15.432 grains) of sugar ; and as each head contains about 6o florets, 7,500,000 distinct flower-tubes must on this estimate be exhausted for each kilogramme (2.204 lb.) of sugar collected. Among the richer sources of nectar of north temperate regions are reckoned the apple, asparagus, asters, barberry, basswood, and the European lime or linden, beans, bone set, borage, broom, buckwheat, catnip, or catmint, cherry, cleome, clover, cotton, crocus, currant, dandelion, eucalyptus, figwort, furze, golden-rod, gooseberry, hawthorn, heather, horehound, hya cinth, lucerne (alfalfa in America), maple, mignonette, mint, motherwort, mustard, onion, pear, poplar, quince, rape, raspberry, sage, sycamore, teasel, thyme, tulip-tree, turnip and willows, and the "honey-dew" of the leaves of the whitethorn, oak, linden, beech and some other trees.
Content of Honey.—Honey contains a large number of mate rials which have been detected by chemical means as well as others which appear only from physiological experimentation. An average analysis, as made by Browne of the U.S. Department of Agricul ture from American honeys, is as follows: water, 17.70%; laevulose, 40.50%; dextrose, 34.02%; cane-sugar (sucrose), 1.90%; dextrins and gums, 1.51%; ash (a large number of inor ganic compounds,doubtless varying greatly with honey from differ ent plant and geographical sources), 0.15%. These percentages still leave a considerable amount of material not accounted for in the usual chemical analysis. Several materials are found in honey which either vary considerably or are difficult to determine quanti tatively, as follows : pollen grains suspended in honey, derived probably by accidental contamination during the gathering or ripening process, a minute source of protein material in the honey ; small particles of bees-wax, probably not all derived from the process of extracting honey by modern methods; some albumi noids, possibly in part from pollen grains but also possibly normal to honey itself ; free acid, usually calculated by chemists as for mic but said to consist largely of malic (the calculation as formic being a result of an unfounded theory of former times that bees use formic acid from the poison glands as a preservative, whereas the poison glands do not produce formic acid) ; various colouring materials of plant origin, such as chlorophyll derivatives, carotin, zanthophyll, etc. Other substances which have been found in honeys but which cannot be determined quantitatively are : various enzymes, such as invertase produced in considerable quantities by honey-bees and used in the transformation of sucrose in nectar into dextrose and laevulose, diastase (amylase), cata lase, inulase and other enzymes in certain honeys; aromatic bodies of doubtful character and origin which give the characteristic aromas to honeys from various plant species. In certain honeys or honey-dew honeys, higher alcohols, mannite, dulcite, have been detected, and in rare cases the trisaccharide melezitose has been found. The recent work in nutrition has caused a search to be made for vitamins in honeys of various sources. Vitamins A, B and C have been found, but far more work is needed in this field.
Honey is a supersaturated solution of these materials in a non crystallizable sugar under ordinary conditions, whereas dextrose forms crystals most readily. The proportions of these two sugars vary enormously in honeys of different plant origin, those of the California sages and tupelo of the south-eastern United States being high in laevulose, as a result of which these honeys rarely, if ever, form crystals. On the other hand, honeys from lucerne (al falfa) are high in dextrose and form crystals quickly after removal from the hive and combs. The fineness of the crystals formed in honey depends on the rapidity of granulation or crystallization, since dextrose crystals are not definite and fixed in form. A dis turbance of the balance of the supersaturated honey solution, as by the artificial removal of some ash, immediately upsets the bal ance and precipitation immediately follows. Dextrose forms a crystal with one molecule of water of crystallization, with the result that when honey granulates, the water content of the solu tion of uncrystallized sugars is increased. As a result of this fermentation of honey is more apt to occur in granulated honey than in liquid honey. Honey also has certain interesting physical properties, so far unexplained. For example, if a solution of honey and water in equal parts is made and subjected to extremely low temperatures, the solution does not freeze solid as a similar sugar solution would do, but forms a mushy mass. This is the explana tion of the use of honey and water as an anti-freeze solution for automobile radiators.
Adulterants of honey are cane-sugar, artificially prepared in vert sugars, various syrups and the different varieties of manu factured glucose. Honey sophisticated with glucose containing copperas as an impurity is turned an inky colour by liquids containing tannin, as tea. These adulterations are readily detected by modern chemical methods.
Honey is mildly laxative in effect. Some few kinds are pur ported to be poisonous, as the reddish honey stored by the Brazil ian wasp Nectarina (Polistes, Latr.) Lecheguana, Shuck., the ef fects of which have been vividly described by Aug. de Saint Hilaire, the spring honey of the wild bees of East Nepaul, said to be rendered noxious by collection from rhododendron flowers (Hooker, Himalayan Journals, i. 19o, ed. 1855), and the honey of Trebizond, which from its source, the blossoms of Azalea pontica and Rhododendron ponticum (perhaps to be identified with Pliny's Aegolethron), acquires the qualities of an irritant and intoxicant narcotic, as described by Xenophon (Anab. iv. 8). Pliny (Nat. Hist. xxi. 45) describes as noxious a livid-coloured honey found in Persia and Gaetulia. Honey obtained from Kalmia latifolia, L., the calico bush, mountain laurel or spoonwood of the northern United States, and allied species, is sometimes reputed deleterious; and G. Bidie (Madras Quart. Journ. Med. Sci., Oct. 1861, p. 399) mentions urtication, headache, extreme prostration and nausea, and intense thirst among the symptoms produced by a small quantity only of a honey from Coorg jungle. A South African species of Euphorbia, as was experienced by the missionary Mof fat (Miss. Lab. p. 32, 1849), yields a poisonous honey. The nectar of certain flowers is asserted to cause even in bees a fatal kind of vertigo. The evidence for any honey having poisonous properties is exceedingly doubtful and in all probability the symptoms de scribed by these old writers were due either to overeating or to sensitivity to osmotic pressure set up by honey in an empty stomach. Later observations do not substantiate these old theories. As a demulcent and flavouring agent, honey is employed in the oxymel, oxymel scillae, mel boracis and con f ectio piperis of the British Pharmacopoeia.
To the ancients honey was of very great importance as an arti cle of diet, being almost their only available source of sugar. It was valued by them also for its medicinal virtues. According to Hindu medical writers, honey when new is laxative, and when more than a year old astringent (U. C. Dutt, Mat. Med. of the Hindus, p. 277, 1877). Ceromel, formed by mixing at a gentle heat one part by weight of yellow wax with four of clarified honey and straining, is used in India and other tropical countries as a mild stimulant for ulcers in the place of animal fats, which there rapidly become rancid and unfit for medicinal purposes. Pills prepared with honey as an excipient are said to remain unin durated, however long they may be kept (Med. Times, 1857, i. 269). Mead, of yore a favourite beverage in England, is made by fermentation of the liquor obtained by boiling in water combs from which the honey has been drained. In the preparation of sack mead, an ounce of hops is added to each gallon of the liquor, and after the fermentation a small quantity of brandy. Metheglin, or hydromel, is manufactured by fermenting with yeast a solution of honey flavoured with boiled hops (see Cooley, Cyciop.). A kind of mead is largely consumed in Abyssinia, where it is carried on journeys in large horns (Stern, Wanderings, p. 317, 1862). In Rus sia a drink termed Lipez is made from the delicious honey of the linden. The mu/sum of the ancient Romans consisted of honey, wine and water boiled together. The clarre, or piment, of Chaucer's time was wine mixed with honey and spices, and strained till clear; a similar drink was bracket, made with wort of ale instead of wine. Honey is occasionally employed for giving strength and flavour to ale. In ancient Egypt it was valued as an embalming material; and in the East, for the preservation of fruit, and the making of cakes, sweetmeats, and other articles of food, it is largely consumed. Grafts, seeds and bird's eggs, for transmission to great distances, are sometimes packed in honey. In India a mixture of honey and milk, or of equal parts of curds, honey and clarified butter, is a respectful offering to a guest, or to a bridegroom on his arrival at the door of the bride's father, and one of the purificatory ceremonies of the Hindus is the placing of a little honey in the mouth of a new-born male infant. Cream or fresh butter together with honey, and with or without bread, is a favourite dish with the Arabs.
Among the observances at the Fandroana or New Year's festival, in Madagascar, is the eating of mingled rice and honey by the queen and her guests; in the same country honey is placed in the sacred water of sprinkling used at the blessing of the chil dren previous to circumcision. Honey was frequently employed in the ancient religious ceremonies of the heathen, but was for bidden as a sacrifice in the Jewish ritual (Lev. ii. I I). With milk or water it was presented by the Greeks as a libation to the dead (Odyss. xi. 27; Eurip. Orest. Ili). A honeycake was the monthly food of the fabled serpent-guardian of the Acropolis (Herod. viii. 41). By the aborigines of Peru honey was offered to the sun.
In Palestine, "the land flowing with milk and honey" (Ex. iii. 17; Numb. xiii. 27), wild bees are numerous, especially in the wilderness of Judaea, and the selling of their produce, obtained from crevices in rocks, hollows in trees and elsewhere, is with many of the inhabitants a means of subsistence. Commenting on I Sam. xiv. 26, J. Roberts (Oriental Illust.) remarks that in the East "the forests literally flow with honey; large combs may be seen hanging on the trees, as you pass along, full of honey." In Galilee, and at Bethlehem and other places in Palestine, a more modern bee-keeping is now extensively carried on. The ancient hives, sometimes still used, are sun-burnt tubes of mud, about 4 ft. in length and 8 in. in diameter, and, with the exception of a small central aperture for the passage of the bees, closed at each end with mud. These are laid together in long rows, or piled pyramidally, and are protected from the sun by a covering of mud and of boughs. The honey is taken from the bees when the ends have been removed, by means of an iron hook. On the pre cipitous slopes of the Teesta valley, in India, the procuring of honey from the pendulous bees' nests, which are sometimes large enough to be conspicuous features at a mile's distance, is the only means by which the idle poor raise their annual rent.
The vast increase in the use of cane and beet-sugars, together with the extensive sale of artificially manufactured syrups made from cane, starch and other materials, has to a considerable degree reduced the importance of honey as an article of human diet. In most countries at present, the amount of cane and beet sugar consumed exceeds the honey used by 5o times, whereas in ancient times honey was the most important source of sweetness. There is, of course, much evidence that the present excessive use of artificially manufactured sugars and syrups is detrimental. All such sugars and syrups are wholly deficient in vitamins and have had extracted from them many other important food con stituents in the manufacturing processes; just as occurs in the highly developed manufacture of other modern food-stuffs. The recent protest against artificially manufactured foods is resulting in an increase in the advice that honey be used as a natural food product, in place of such large quantities of manufactured sweets. Various new and important uses are also being found for honey, in which other syrups cannot be employed satisfactorily.
It is also now known that honey has the important virtue of being a mild disinfectant, in fact, if bacteria of various species are placed in honey, they die within a few hours by the dehy dration set up by the high laevulose content of the honey. Fur thermore, modern processes of removing honey from the comb have been developed so that any danger of contamination is re duced to the utmost. Comb-honey is of course sealed by the cleanly bees themselves in the cells, where contamination is im possible. These facts, together with the various materials now known to occur in honey and not in other sweets, are rapidly increasing the importance of honey as an article of human food. (See also BEE-KEEPING.)