What should be the density of honey and how it affects the quality?

Honey is one of the most unique products donated by nature to man. He is able to feed and cure. Even the ancient people noticed, if you immerse the meat in honey, it does not spoil for a long time. This is due to the high bactericidal properties of the product.

Honey is called the sweet and viscous formation developed by bees. Little toilers fly from flower to beehive thousands of times to collect nectar and process it. Each bee, passing pollen through its body, produces enzymes, thanks to which honey gets its invaluable qualities.

This product contains fructose, glucose, sucrose, vitamins of group B, C, K, E, folic acid and carotene.

Honey is surprisingly diverse. He is floral and cadets. Bees are not only interested in the nectar of flowers, they collect the sweet excretions of other insects (Pad) and sweet dew on spruce cones and leaves of plants (honey dew). In addition, this product is different in composition and fluid content, depending on the region and climatic conditions in which it was collected.

The composition of honeycombs is affected by the vegetation with which nectar was processed by bees. Produced on the basis of buckwheat, acacia, sunflower and so on has its own color and special taste. Nectar, collected in the meadows, where there is forbs, is converted by bees into floral honey. Sometimes, the product is called by habitat of bees: meadow, taiga, mountain, forest, steppe. Or in the region: Altai, Trans-Baikal, Siberian fireplant.

Honey is heavier than water, its volume and specific gravity vary greatly. This product does not have a standard weight unit, the indicators depend on the presence of liquid in the structural mass. Water and medium temperature affect the density, respectively, and the weight of the product (the smaller the liquid, the higher the specific gravity).

For the use of culinary and cosmetic recipes it is necessary to take into account the weight of the product, it can be found in the following table:

• 1 teaspoon weighs from 8 to 12 g;
• 1 tablespoon - from 26 to 32 g;
• 500 ml jar - 750 g;
• can of 1 l - 1440 g;
• can of 2 l - 3000 g;
• can of 3 l - 4270-4500 g.

On hot days, the mass increases to 5%, and in cold weather - decreases to 10%.

After a certain period of time after pumping the product crystallizes. Such a composition is called "sat down." The rate of crystallization depends on the type of product. Faster than the others, the honey comes from a dandelion (less than a week), the composition of herbs will need several months before the shrinkage begins. Thickened product retains its beneficial properties. According to sugar crystals, it is divided into a fine-grained and coarse-grained structure.

If you weigh an empty jar, put honey in it and weigh it again, by subtracting empty containers, you can understand the quality of the product by the weight obtained. The figure below 1400 g per 1 liter can indicates a high humidity. Honey can be diluted or it is immature. Such a mass trickles down with a spoon or drips. The structure of good quality wrapped around a spoon and not stratified into drops.

The quality of the product depends on the liquid contained in it. Excessive moisture happens if the harvest time was due to rainy weather, or the honeycomb was downloaded unripe, that is, not yet sealed with wax, there is a lot of moisture in it, and there are few useful substances. Too liquid diluted composition is subject to fermentation and souring. A good product is always sweet, sour taste is inherent in fermented honey.

Initially, the product is a relatively liquid structure, later the process of crystallization and compaction of the mass occurs. In addition to sugar, fructose affects the structure density. Their excess affects the quality of the product, the honey becomes more liquid. A large amount of glucose, sucrose and gluten in the deprived product makes it denser than floral honey.

If fructose reduces the density and delay the crystallization of honey, the increased content of the enzyme dextrin enhances this process.

In laboratory conditions, check the quality of the product using the Gote method using a diastatic number. To do this, a one-percent starch solution is cleaved within one hour by honey enzymes.

There are ways to check the quality of honey and at home.

• By weight. Quality honey in a one-liter jar should weigh 1.44 kg.
• A good composition dissolves in water completely.
• It should not drip and drip, the viscosity of the product allows you to roll it on a spoon.
• In a quality product, a drop of honey does not spread on the surface; it keeps its shape for a long time.
• Having added iodine to the drop of honey, one should observe whether the hue will change, the blue color indicates the flour content in the product.

Summarizing all the above, we can conclude that the quality of honey directly depends on its density. And the specific gravity of the product is influenced by the plant species, the climatic component of the region, the ambient temperature and the amount of precipitation. A slight weak family of bees cannot give high-quality honey either; it will not have enough enzymes to acquire beneficial properties.

How to choose the right honey, see the following video.