Food Chemistry vol 7 : How bees make honey!!!

Hello steemit friends. Welcome at my 7th post of food chemistry. Today I decided to write about a very healthy food which need a lot of chemical reactions to be made but it is made exclusively from nature! The star of this post is HONEY!!

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Honey is produced by the bees which are the finest chemists of the natural world. With dehydration and enzymes, they transform sugar into nectar and then into honey.
Honey contains about 180 ingredients and is the result of many complex processes. Its main ingredients are carbohydrates, (sugars such as glucose and fructose). It also contains vitamins, minerals, amino acids, enzymes, organic acids, pollen and aromatic components. Scientists call it, supersaturated solution because of its low water content.

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To make honey, bees must first collect the nectar from the flowers, which is a fluid, colorless solution that is not totally sweet compared to honey and has a different chemical composition. Bees using enzymes, convert the complex sugars in the nectar to simple. Τhis process is called hydrolysis and for a chemical laboratory is a very complex process, in order to convert sugar into glucose and fructose requires the presence of high temperature acids or enzymes.
These Enzymes are produced by bees and altering the chemical composition of nectar which comes from the salivary glands of the bees and they never finish in order bees to use them repeatedly.
the most important of these enzymes is invertase which converts sucrose to fructose. also another enzyme is amylase which cleaves amylose into glucose and thus the honey is more easily digested and more sweet. Oxidase glucose helps to break down glucose and stabilize the PH of honey. Finally catalase helps the conversion of hydrogen peroxide into water and oxygen, this way the hydrogen peroxide content is kept low.

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In order bees to make honey, they always follow a protocol. First the wandering bees gather the nectar. Then during the transfer, they add the enzyme invertase and in order to break down the sucrose into fructose and glucose. After transferring the nectar, the bees of the hive swallow the nectar again for about twenty minutes to break down even more sugars. Τhen the bees make air with their wings to evaporate the superfluous water and honey to become even more dense. They stop the air when the solution has about 15-20% and at last they save the honey. With the evaporation of water and enzymes the result is a supersaturated solution.

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Honey is a very important super food for our health cause it has several of nutrient properties for our body..As you read it is a very complicated process for bees to make it!! I suggest you to consume one tb of honey daily cause it is super healthy!!!

Thanks for reading..for more food chemistry post you can checkout my profile or follow me in order to stay tuned for my future posts!!! @zkalemiss

References
Bee culture
wikipedia
healthy with honey
thekitchn