All About Honey: Composition and Origins

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30 Dec 2023

HONEY

Honey is a sweet product obtained as a result of the nectar secreted from the flowers of plants or the nectar glands of plants, and the secondary substances produced by insects living with the plant by taking advantage of the plants, collected by honey bees and exchanged within the body, stored in honeycombs and matured there. It is thought that bees and honey emerged 100-150 million years ago, when the first mammals were alive.

There are an average of 10-40 thousand bees in a hive, and the bees can fly within a radius of 7-10 kilometers. They leave the hive 10-15 times a day and visit 80-100 flowers each time they go out to produce honey.
Honey is divided into two groups according to the sources from which bees collect nectar. These; flower and secretion honeys. Honey contains macro and micro components such as carbohydrates, water, vitamins, phenolic compounds, organic acids, proteins and free amino acids.
Although the main content of honey consists of fructose and glucose, it contains smaller amounts of other carbohydrates, proteins, phenolic compounds, enzymes, amino acids, minerals, vitamins, organic acids, water and sugar, as well as additional auxiliary components.
The total mass of honey consists of 95-98% carbohydrates and 2-5% secondary components and minerals. The natural food of honey bees is carbohydrates. Honey bees break down the nectar they collect into glucose and fructose with the help of the invertase enzyme in the stomach, thus creating a mixture consisting of approximately 70% glucose and fructose and 7% disaccharides. Honey contains mainly maltose and sucrose as disaccharides, melositose as the main trisaccharide, and small amounts of oligosaccharides.
Many of the plants that honey bees use as a source are natural sources of compounds that produce phytochemicals with antioxidant properties and destroy free radicals. As a result of this interaction, phytochemicals can be transported into honey. Plant-derived polyphenolic compounds such as pinobanksin, pinosembrin, chrysin, vitamin C and enzymes such as catalase determine the antioxidant capacity of honey.
It contains 0.02-1% in honey, with a higher amount of potassium, calcium, phosphorus and a smaller amount of chlorine, magnesium, sulfur, silica, copper, manganese, sodium, zinc, iodine and iron.
Although honey depends on the source, it is very low in amino acids, which are the building blocks of proteins. The presence of proteins and amino acids in honey is of plant origin and originates from pollen. Honey mainly contains proline, alanine, phenyl alanine, losin, tyrosine, isoleucine and glutamic acid. There are approximately 20-300mg of amino acids in 100gr of honey. Proline constitutes 50-85% of the amino acids found in honey. Depending on whether the honey is flower or secretion honey, it contains 26 amino acids in close proportions, except proline. Proline is an amino acid added by the honeybee during the transformation of nectar into honey, which indicates the maturity of honey. The amount of proline in quality honey should be higher than 350mg/kg and the amino acids in honey should contain at least 66% proline. Many enzymes are found in honey, including diastase, glucose oxidase, phosphotase and catalase. Honey contains vitamins B, E, C and K, depending on the source it is obtained from and the amount of pollen.