Amazing Honey!

Raw Honey

Honey found in the supermarket is usually not ‘raw’ honey. Raw honey is specifically honey which has not been heated or modified in any way from its original state. When honey is heated, its yeasts and enzymes, which are responsible for activating vitamins and minerals when taken within the body, produce wonderfully delicate aromas. Although it smells great, this is the honey having some of its nutrients destroyed. Not Good!

Raw Honey

Seeing how it is raw, AND created by insects, good honey does contain some very interesting items, such as honeycomb bits, bee pollen, and broken bee wing fragments! YUM!

Honeycomb is pretty cool stuff in itself, and in real life a honeycomb is a mass of hexagonal wax cells built by honey bees in their nests and containing their larvae, and stores of honey and pollen.

Honey ~Physical properties:

• Crystallization makes honey lighter in color only. There is no change to the taste or nutrient value
• Low in moisture content, causing it to granulate and crystallize to a margarine-like consistency after a few weeks to two months
• Honey is unstable when the water content is too high. If you add water to honey, it ferments and creates a thick sort-of, alcoholic, Mead
• How weird are humans with this fact, discovered in 1965 by László Fejes Tóth: “A cell end composed of two hexagons and two smaller rhombuses would actually be .035% (or approximately 1 part per 2850) more efficient. This difference is too minute to measure on an actual honeycomb, and irrelevant to the hive economy in terms of efficient use of wax, considering that wild comb varies considerably from any mathematical notion of "ideal" geometry.” [this fact from en.wikipedial.org]

HUH!

I saw a question on the internet asking how to eat a honeycomb? We used to just open the jar, grab the honeycomb, pull it from the honey jar, take a bite, and then drop it back into the honey—what is the question?

You can call “eating it” whatever you want, but the actual “eating” is very simple and straightforward. You can then chew the wax making up the comb where the honey was stored, and I imagine that is where the confusion comes in on "eating it". Chewing the honeycomb is more of a molding activity because it is not necessary to swallow the wax comb after chewing the honey out of it.

Raw honey chemical properties:

• Produces alkaline in the body, rather than acid
• Counteracts acid indigestion
• Mix  with ginger and lemon juice to relieve nausea
• Mix with ginger and lemon juice to supply energy
•  Proven use as an antibacterial topical treatment for burns and ulcers.   [Scientifically speaking, this is because honey tends to withdraw water, discouraging the growth of microorganisms, such as infection-causing bacteria]
• Enzymatic activity of honey produces hydrogen peroxide, which generate highly reactive free-radicals, also good for anti-bacterial purposes
• Honey has phytonutrients which have been shown to possess cancer-preventing and anti-tumor properties.  They include:  caffeic acid, methyl caffeate, phenylethyl caffeate, and several others.  

Honey~Vitamin / enzymatic actions:

• Contains amylase, an enzyme which helps predigest starchy foods like bread! Good, good!
• Contains high level of anti-oxidants, which fights infection
• Honey is the only food that includes all the substances, (by itself!) necessary to sustain life, including enzymes, vitamins, minerals, and water
• The only food that contains "pinocembrin", an antioxidant associated with improved brain functioning
• Proof exists that these substances prevent colon cancer in animals by shutting down activity of two enzymes, phosphatidylinositol-specific phospholippase C and lipoxygenase

Once heated, all these miraculous enzymes and phytonutrients, lose these healing properties

Question: Is there a way to test honey for purity?

Answer: There are 3 ways to test honey for purity: If pure,

§ a dog will not lick it,

§ flies will not sit on it and

§ it will not leave a stain