CHAPTER ONE
1.0 INTRODUCTION
Honey is as old as written history dating back to 2100 BC where it
was mentioned Sumerian and Babylonian cuneiform writings, the Hittie
code and then sacred writings of India and Egypt it is presumably even
older than that. It names from English living and it was the first and
most wide spread sweetener used by man, legend has it that cupid dipped
his love arrows in honey before aiming at unsuspecting lovers. In the
old testament of the Bible, Israel was often referred to as the land
of milk and honey. “Mead, an alcoholic drink made from honey was called
nectar of the goods” high praise indeed. Honey was valued highly and
often used as a form of currency tribute or offering. In the 4th
century A. D German peasants paid their feudal Lords in honey and
beeswax.
Although experts argue whether the honeybee is native to the
Americas, conquering spanards in 1600 AD found Mexicans and Central
Americans had already developed bee keeping method to produce honey. In
ancient days, honey has been used not only in food and beverages, but
also to make cement in furniture polishes and varnishes and for
medicinal purposes. And of course, bees perform vital senlice of
pollinating fruits, legumes and other types of food producing plants in
the course of their business of honey production. Honey was pronounced
in English (hnni) is a sweet food made by bees using nectar from
flowers. The variety produced by honey bees i.e. (GenusApis) is the
most commonly referred to and is the type of honey collected by bee
keepers and consumed by human. Honey produced by other bees and insects
has distinctly different properties. Honey bees transform nectar into
honey by a process of regurgitation, and store it as a primary food
source wax honey combs inside the beehive. Beekeeping practices
encourage over production of honey so the excess can be taken from the
colony. Honey acts its sweetness from the monosaccharides fructose and
glucose and has approximately the same relative sweetness as that of
granulated sugar. It has attractive chemical properties for baking and a
distinctive flavours that leads some people to prefer it over sugar
and other sweetness. Most microorganisms do not grow in honey because
of its low water activity (9w) of 0.6. However, honey sometimes
contains dormant endospores of the bacterium clostridium botulinum
which can be dangerous to infants, as the endospores can transform into
toxin producing bacteria in the infant’s immature intestinal tract,
leading to illness and even death.
Honey has a long history of human consumption, and is used in
various foods and beverages as a sweetener and flavouring. It also has a
role in religion and symbolism, flavours of honey varies based on the
available. It is also used in various medicinal traditions to treat
ailments. The study of pollens and spores in raw honey
(mellissopalynology) can determine the floral source of honey. Because
bees carry an Electrostatic charge and can attract other particles, the
same techniques of melissopalynology can be used in area environmental
studies of radioactive particles dust or particulate pollution. Honey
is produced by bees as a food source. In cold weather or when fresh
food source are scarce, bees use their stored honey as their source of
energy. By controlling for bee swarms to nest in artificial hives,
people have been able to semidomesticate the insects and harvest excess
honey. In the hive (or in a wild nest). There are three (3) types of
bee in a hive. A single female queen bee, A seasonally variable number
of male drone bees to fertise new queens and some 20,000 + 40,000
female workers bees. The worker bees raise larvae and collect the nectar
that will become honey in the hive. Leaving the hive, they collect
sugar –rich flower nectar and return.
In the hive, the bees use their “Honey stomachs” to ingest and
regurgitate the nectar a number of times until it is partially
digested. The bees work together as a group with the regurgitation and
digestion until the product reaches a desired quality. It is then store
honeycomb cells after the final regurgitation the honeycomb is left
unsealed. However, the nectar is still high in both water content and
natural yeast which unchecked would cause the sugars in the nectar to
ferment. The process continues as bees inside the hive fan their wings
creating a strong draft across the honeycomb, which enhances
evaporation of much of the water from the nectar. This reduction in
water content raises the sugar concentration and prevent fermentation.
Ripe honey as removed from the hive by a bee keeper has a long
shelf-life and will not ferment if properly sealed. Honey use and
production has a long and varied history in many culture honey has
associations that as beyond its use as a food. Honey is as a talisman and symbol of sweetness.
Honey is collected from wild bee colonies or from domesticated
beehives. Wild bee nest are sometime located by following a honey guide
bird. Collecting honey is typically achieved by using smoke from a bee
smoker to pacify the bees, this causes the bees to attempt to save
resource of the hive from a possible forest fire, and makes than far
less aggressive. The honeywomb is removed from the hive and the honey is extracted from that often using a honey extractor.
Then the honey is laxer filtered. The effect honey has on light is
useful for determining the type and quality variations in the water
content alter the refractive index of honey. Water content can easily be measured with a refractometer. Typically the refractive index for honey will range from 1.504 at 13% humidity, to 1.474 at 25%. Honey also has an effect on polarized light
in that it will rotate the polarization plane. The fructose will give a
negative rotation while the glucose will give a positive one. The
overall can rotation be used to measure the ratio of the mixture.
Moreso, honey has the ability to absorb moisture directly from the air, a phenomenon called hygroscopy.
The amount of water the honey will absorb is dependent on the relative
humidity of the air. This hygroscopic nature require that honey be
stored in a sealed containers to prevent fermentation. Honey will tend
to absorb more water in this manner than the individual sugars would
allow on their own which may be due to other ingredients it contains.
Honey which contains a number of antioxidants components that act
as preservatives, also shows promise as a replacement for some
synthetic antioxidant widely used as a preservatives in salad dressings
and other foods, according to Vicki Engeseth, associate professor of
food chemistry at the university. High fructose syrups that is known as
Isoglucose in Europe, kicked in the US in the 1970s when the country
developed new technologies to process this bulk calorific sweetener. The
ingredient is an alternative to sucrose rapidly gained in popularity
and is now used extensively by soft drinks makers such as Coca-cola and
Pepsi-cola.
More so, honey natural syrup produced by bees is similar to invert
sugar, with a small but variable excess of lacunose (fructose). The
composition and flavour of honey varies with the plant source of the
nectar processing and storage but a typical composition is 41% percent
fructose, 34%, 18% and 2% sucrose with a PH value of 3.8-4.2. According
to the US researcher, Dark coloured honey such as buck wheat honey is
generally thought to certain higher levels of antioxidants than the
light coloured varieties.
1.1 AIMS AND OBJECTIVES
The aims and objectives are to determine: -
The physico- chemical properties
Sugars: -
- Glucose
- Fructose
- Maltose
- Sucrose
- Dextrin
Refractive index
Colours
Climatic change