How to distinguish real white honey from fake. How to identify natural or fake honey

I welcome everyone to my electronic beekeeper diary!

Yesterday a friend called me and asked for advice on honey. He was going to visit relatives in Kazakhstan and wanted to bring local honey to his grandmother.

After browsing the shelves, I bought a couple of jars to try from different manufacturers, as a result, one honey turned out to be sour, and the other began to hurt my stomach.

I explained to him for a long time how to choose a good product, and then I thought it would be better to write down all these recommendations so that I could take a printout with me. Search useful tips Further.

A few tricks when choosing honey

Liquid honey is only available for a month after the honey harvest, which lasts from the end of July to the end of September. By the end of October, all collected honey begins to crystallize and thicken, except for honey from acacia and heather. Therefore, if you are offered liquid honey at the market in winter, most likely it has been melted or diluted glucose syrup. Remember that when honey is heated to 40 degrees or higher, it loses all its valuable properties and turns into ordinary sweet syrup.
To check the naturalness of liquid honey, dip a spoon into it and lift it up - high-quality honey will slowly flow down a long thread, and if it breaks, a slide will form on the surface of the honey, which will slowly spread. Fake honey quickly pours from a spoon or scatters with splashes. You can roll the honey onto a spoon - if it lies in even folds, it means that what you are looking at is not fake.
Be sure to smell the honey and taste it - it should have a fragrant smell and a characteristic taste that cannot be compared with anything else. The lack of aroma indicates that the honey is artificial, and the caramel flavor indicates that the honey was exposed to high temperatures.
The color of honey is not an indicator of its quality, so white honey– does not mean sugar, and dark brown color does not indicate the presence of molasses or sugar syrup in honey. Sweet clover, acacia and fireweed honey have light shades, buckwheat, cherry and honeydew honey are dark brown, and other varieties can be light yellow, amber and dark amber.

There are ways to check the quality of honey in more detail at home. Some housewives dissolve honey in water and add lugol or iodine - a blue solution indicates that starch or flour has been added to the product. More inquisitive experts set up a real chemical laboratory in the kitchen, but this can be avoided if you take honey from a trusted beekeeper who keeps bees in an ecologically clean area.

Source: www.edimdoma.ru

How to choose natural honey on the market

The problem is how to choose real honey on the market, faces many people, especially townspeople, and faces it acutely. It's no joke - both shops and markets are filled with fakes of varying degrees of severity, and in some places sellers are so convincing and professional in their fakes that it is almost impossible to leave them without buying.

So, instead of a truly natural product, some beekeepers-businessmen sell one that is made by bees, but not from nectar or honeydew, but from simple sugar syrup, which the beekeepers themselves diligently feed their pets. Often sold honey is two or three years old, melted and poured many times. No one, of course, admits that it is old.

And the most severe counterfeits are vegetable syrups, disguised as natural product. Such surrogates are most often prepared by evaporating melon or watermelon juice. Pass them off as natural honey the hardest thing, but sometimes scammers succeed. In order not to be deceived and choose real high-quality honey, you should know the main features of a natural product.

How to distinguish good honey from fakes

Taste.
It should be somewhat astringent and cloying. How to choose natural honey to taste? It has a pronounced specificity. Linden is somewhat more delicate, sunflower or buckwheat are especially bright and clear. Fake honey or honey collected from sugar syrup tastes like banal sugar syrup. As a rule, they do not cause the slight burning sensation on the tongue that is characteristic of a natural product.
By smell.
Same with the smell. How to choose quality honey on the market? Smell it! Any natural product has a specific aroma, even when thickened. And sugar syrups have almost no smell.
By general consistency.
It is most easily identified by rubbing a drop of the sweet treat between your fingers. How to choose natural honey? It will be easily rubbed evenly and absorbed into the skin. The counterfeit most often forms clots and lumps that are easily felt by the fingers.

Very often, when choosing honey at the market or from hand, it is possible to evaluate its consistency by dipping a stick or spoon into it. “Correct” honey, when poured from a spoon, will form a thin thread, and on the surface of the main mass it will accumulate in the form of a pagoda, which will gradually spread. The fake, as a rule, drips from the spoon and immediately falls into the main volume.
By color.
How to choose the right honey by color? This sign is the most difficult. Thus, some types of honey can very easily be confused with “sugar” honey because of their lightness. However, honey made from sugar usually gives the impression of being too white. In addition, natural honey is always quite homogeneous and transparent, while fake honey usually has clearly visible turbidity and a small sediment at the bottom.

But even knowing how to choose natural honey based on these characteristics, it is better not to rush and take selected samples in the smallest quantities - a mayonnaise jar, for example. And already work magic on them at home. For example, there is good methods assessing the presence of certain additives in honey.

What is added to honey

Starch.
It is calculated by ordinary school experience: a few drops of iodine are dropped into a jar. If starch is present, the streak on the surface of the honey will turn blue.
Sugar.
It’s even easier to check: dip a piece of bread into honey and let it sit for ten minutes. After this it is removed. If the bread has hardened, it means the honey is good. If it's soft, it means there's a lot of sugar syrup in it.
Water.
Water will definitely show itself if you drop honey on a piece of paper. A good product will remain a drop on the paper, while a product diluted with water will begin to form liquid stains or even leak.
Chalk.
It is most often added to the product to give the impression of thickness and density. To detect it, you need to drop vinegar essence into a spoon with honey. If it hisses, it means it’s bad.

In order to check whether the honey you have chosen is of high quality, you can simply poke it with a hot wire. If after removing anything remains on it, this is a fake. Good honey Doesn't stick to hot metal. And only after these manipulations at home help you choose real, high-quality honey, you can safely go to the market and buy a full supply for the winter from an honest seller.

By the way, it is important to remember that no natural honey can be stored for several years without thickening. Fortunately, after a few months it begins to crystallize. And if in the middle of winter they sell you a product as pure as a baby’s tear and flowing like a mountain stream, you know that something is wrong with it.

Source: sostavproduktov.ru

Distinctive properties and signs of natural honey

Consistency is the first sign of real honey. First of all, it should be homogeneous; there should be no sediment or any separation at the bottom of the jar of honey. Also, depending on the time of year and the ambient temperature, this indicator varies: young honey has a liquid consistency, and by winter it becomes thicker.

With the onset of cold weather, natural honey, as a rule, crystallizes (“sugarizes”) - it becomes lighter, cloudier and thicker. If this does not happen, then the honey is adulterated.

Attention!

An exception to the rule is acacia honey; this type of honey crystallizes more slowly than others.

That’s why real honey cannot be liquid in winter; in this case, it was either melted (usually beekeepers say “dissolved”) to give it a marketable appearance, or it was obtained by feeding bees with sugar. By the way, in winter, packaged honey on store shelves usually has a liquid consistency, which should be alarming.

Pay attention to the fluidity of honey ( this method suitable for freshly pumped liquid honey). The quality of young honey can be determined this way: dip a spoon into a bottle of honey, scoop it up and lift it up. Real honey lasts a long, long time, flows in an even stream, does not break into drops, lies on the plate in a heap, and then smoothly spreads over its surface. The last drop of flowing honey springs back and is pulled back to the spoon.
If you turn the spoon around its axis, the honey should “wrap” around it like a ribbon. Unripe honey usually drips off immediately, no matter how fast you spin the spoon.

Also try rubbing a little honey between your fingers. The real one will be completely absorbed, but the fake one will form a lump that can be rolled out.
Taste. Real honey, in addition to being simply sweet, should also taste pleasantly bitter, cause a slight sore throat, and have a tart taste. Hold some honey in your mouth and swallow - the right honey“tugs” the throat.
Smell and aroma. Real honey smells like flowers, the smell is unobtrusive and natural. Artificial ones have two extremes: the smell can be completely absent or it can be sharp, unnatural, and reek of caramel.
The color of honey depends on the honey plants from which the nectar was collected. For example, flower honey comes in light shades, buckwheat - brown, linden - amber. White color may indicate that the bees were fed sugar syrup. In this case, they ferment the sugar and process it like regular nectar from the fields. In the end it turns out regular honey, which is difficult to determine even in laboratory conditions.

Of course, due to its beneficial properties and taste qualities it is significantly inferior to natural.

Often, unscrupulous sellers offer customers dark-colored liquid honey (supposedly buckwheat) in spring or early summer. This color can be obtained by melting last year’s frozen honey. Such honey is “dead”, since when heated above 40 degrees it loses all its beneficial features.

For the same reason, you should not add honey to hot drinks (tea, milk, cocoa). IN for cosmetic purposes(when preparing homemade masks, scrubs), it is advisable to slightly heat crystallized honey in a water bath at a water temperature of about 40 degrees.

The so-called May honey is very popular among the population. For experienced beekeepers, the word “May” causes an involuntary smile. No, theoretically, honey can be collected in May, but no beekeeper in his right mind would take food in the form of sweet flower nectar and pollen from future brood, which they need for growth and development. Pumping out honey in early spring leads to lethargy, weakness of future working bees and a loss of many tens of kg of honey in the fall during the main collection of bee products.

How to experimentally determine the authenticity of honey at home?

The high demand for honey and other bee products creates favorable conditions for scammers. Currently, flour, chalk, sawdust, starch, sucrose, molasses and other fillers are used to create counterfeit products.

Some types of counterfeits are difficult to detect even in laboratory conditions. For example, feeding bees that bring nectar from the fields with sugar syrup. The color of such honey is usually lighter, almost white, and it also crystallizes more slowly.

Methods for determining whether honey is fake using chemical reactions:

Dissolve a little honey in a glass of water, then pour the liquid into a transparent container. If the product contains foreign impurities (flour, chalk, starch, sawdust), they will either float to the surface or settle to the bottom.
To detect starch or flour, add a drop of iodine to the honey solution, and the solution should turn blue.
Add vinegar to the solution. If something hisses, this is a sure sign of the presence of chalk in it.
But using this method you can detect the presence of sugar or starch syrup. Prepare a 10% honey solution. Add a little to 1/2 part of the solution medical alcohol if it turns white, starch syrup was mixed into the honey. To spot the signs molasses, you need to add silver nitrate or lapis to the remaining half. If dropped white precipitate- that means he is present there.
The presence of impurities can also be determined using blotting paper (blotter). We do not put it on paper a large number of honey, leave for 3-5 minutes. If during this time the back side of the paper has not become wet, then this indicates high quality honey
You can find out whether honey is diluted with sugar syrup by immersing a piece of bread in honey for 10 minutes. Let's see: if the piece is hard, then the honey is normal, but if it has spread or become very soft, then syrup was probably mixed into it.

Watch a video on how to choose the right honey:

Source: www.maski-natural.ru

Methods for determining honey quality

People have their own methods for determining the quality of honey, for example, using a chemical pencil.

The essence is this: a layer of honey is applied to paper, a finger or a spoon and a chemical pencil is drawn over it, or the pencil is dipped into the honey itself.

It is assumed that the honey is adulterated, i.e. contains all sorts of impurities (sugar, sugar honey, as well as an increased amount of water), then a colored pencil mark will remain. However, researcher V.G. Chudakov in 1972 tested 36 samples of honey of varying quality, including 13 falsified ones, and believes that this folk method determining the naturalness of honey and assessing its quality is absolutely wrong.

There is another popular method to determine if honey is fake; it involves testing it on blotting paper. A small amount of honey is placed on blotting paper. If after a few minutes back side If a watery spot appears on the paper, this is considered a sign of falsification.

Again, V.G. Chudakov conducted laboratory studies of this sample, which led to the conclusion that the sample actually makes it possible to identify almost 100% of counterfeit honey, but in addition, some natural honeys also fall into the category of counterfeits.

Advice!

If you buy honey, look in reference books to see what it should look like. The main thing is that it must have a certain aroma, a honey taste, that is, the bouquet corresponding to a certain type of natural honey must also match the color.

If honey is too white, it should raise suspicions about whether it is sugary. If the color is dark brown, is it honeydew? If its aroma is dulled, the taste of caramel is felt - that means it is molten honey.

Also pay attention to the consistency of the honey - it should correspond to the thickness of the variety; at a temperature of 20 degrees Celsius, it should wrap around a spoon like a ribbon, with sweet threads that break at a certain moment.

Liquid honey should raise suspicion. Most likely, this is unripe honey. It will not be stored, it will ferment, as it contains a lot of water. Such honey will not “wrap” around the spoon, but will simply drain from it. If you buy honey in winter, it should not be runny, and if it is, it has most likely been heated or diluted.

When purchasing, check honey for fermentation. When stirring, you should not feel that it is not viscous, that it is actively foaming, that gas bubbles appear on the surface, that it emits a specific sour smell, and that there is also an alcoholic or burnt taste.

Before buying a large amount of honey, buy 100-200 grams for testing.

Beware of purchasing honey from apiaries located along roads with heavy traffic. Such honey may contain an increased amount of lead compounds and other substances that reach the flowers with car exhaust fumes. Lead gets into honey with nectar and pollen, and this is dangerous for the health of those who consume it.

Honey collected in areas with unfavorable ecology is very harmful.

How to identify impurities in honey?

To determine various impurities in honey, it is recommended following methods. Pour water into a transparent jar, add one teaspoon of honey, stir - the honey will dissolve and an impurity will settle at the bottom.

In order to detect an admixture of flour or starch in honey, you need to pour 3-5 ml of an aqueous solution of honey (1:2) into a jar or glass and add 3-5 drops of Lugol's solution (or tincture of iodine). If honey contains flour or starch, the solution will turn blue.

An admixture of starch syrup (a mixture of cool water and starchy sugar) can be recognized by appearance, in terms of stickiness and lack of crystallization. You can also mix one part of honey with 2-3 parts of distilled water, add a quarter of the volume of 96% alcohol and shake.

If the honey contains starch syrup, the solution will take on a milky color. After this solution settles, a transparent semi-liquid sticky mass (dextrin) will settle. If there is no impurity, the solution will remain transparent.

You can detect impurities of sugar (beet) molasses and ordinary sugar by adding a solution of silver nitrate (lapis) to a 5-10% solution of honey in water. If a white precipitate of silver chloride appears, this indicates the presence of an impurity. If there is no sediment, then the honey is pure.

There is another way: to 5 ml of a 20% solution of honey in distilled water, add 22.5 ml of methyl (wood) alcohol; when an abundant yellowish-white precipitate forms, it will become clear that the honey contains sugar syrup.

To detect the admixture of inverted sugar (grated honey) there is a rather complicated method: grind 5 g of honey with a small amount of ether (in which the breakdown products of fructose are dissolved), then filter the ether solution into a bowl, evaporate to dryness and add 2-3 drops of freshly prepared honey to the residue. % solution of resorcinol in concentrated hydrochloric acid (specific weight 1.125 g).

If the impurity turns orange (to cherry red), it means there is invert sugar.

An increased percentage of sucrose in honey, which can be determined in laboratory conditions, indicates its poor quality: in natural flower honey there is no more than 5% sucrose, no more than 10% in honeydew honey. How better quality natural honey, the less sucrose it contains. "Sugar" honey has its own organoleptic indicators: smell of old honeycombs, insipid, inexpressive taste, liquid consistency (if it’s fresh), when long-term storage becomes thick, sticky, sticky.

“Sugar” honey (the bees were fed or fed with sugar), like all unnatural honeys, is characterized by the absence of vitamins, organic acids, protein and aromatics, mineral salts. In sugar honey, the main element is silicon, and there are practically no other salts, there are only traces of them. In natural honey it’s the other way around.

If the honey does not crystallize, then we can assume that there is an admixture of potato molasses.

Advice!

In order to detect an admixture of honeydew honey, pour 1 part of an aqueous solution of honey (1:1) into a glass and add 2 parts of lime water, then heat the mixture to a boil. If brown flakes form and precipitate, this indicates the presence of an admixture of honeydew honey.

How can you spot a fake?

In a weak cup warm tea add a little of what you bought under the guise of honey. If you were not deceived, the tea will darken, but no sediment will form at the bottom. Over time, honey becomes cloudy and thickens (candied) - this is a sure sign good quality. And not, as many people mistakenly believe, that the honey has gone bad.

Sometimes honey during storage is divided into two layers: it thickens only at the bottom, and remains liquid at the top. This indicates that it is unripe and should therefore be eaten as quickly as possible - unripe honey only lasts for a few months.

Attention!

Careless beekeepers do not take bees out to collect nectar, but simply feed them sugar. Sugar honey is unnatural. There is nothing useful in it. This “sugar” honey is unnaturally white.

In real honey there is no free water - in mature honey, water (about 20%) is completely bound in a true saturated solution. Honey with sugar syrup has high humidity, this can be checked in the following way: dip a piece of bread in honey, and after 8-10 minutes, take it out. High-quality honey will harden the bread. If, on the contrary, it has softened or completely spread out, then this is nothing more than sugar syrup.

Tricks of honey sellers designed for gullible buyers

First, close your ears and don't listen to what they tell you. Check everything yourself. Of course, there may be one honest salesperson out of a bunch of liars, but how do you know that the one standing in front of you is honest? Try honey not only from the top, but also from the bottom of the jar. Feel free to put a spoon into the jar and don’t listen to the sellers who start shouting: “Don’t spoil the product!”

Unheated honey - both fresh transparent and candied - is an effective antiseptic, and a clean spoon in a jar cannot spoil it. It’s a different matter if it wasn’t honey at the bottom, or if the honey was previously heated, which led to the loss of its antiseptic and all other healing properties.

Crystallization (sugarification) is a natural process for honey that does not affect its quality and composition useful substances. Don't be fooled by crystallized honey. Do not come the next day to the seller who promised you uncrystallized honey. They will bring the same thing, but warmed up. But under no circumstances should you heat honey, because... this turns it into a simple sweet substance, devoid of many beneficial properties!

It is not difficult to buy high-quality natural honey if you know how to choose it. You can avoid buying a fake bee product by learning a few tricks. Read about ways to distinguish real honey from fake and what methods to use for this.

Any buyer should be able to recognize real honey and be able to distinguish it from a fake. Sometimes it happens that, focusing only on the appearance in the bank, a person buys a product, and when he comes home, for a long time doesn't notice the change. Natural bee elixir must meet several mandatory points. Which one, see below:

First of all, you need to determine whether there is a persistent odor. The aroma wafting from the jar will always tell you whether the product in front of you is real or fake. Honey that does not contain syrups, that has not been boiled or mixed with various additives, smells like honeycomb from a beehive - wax, nectar, pollen, sweetness, directly honey.
Natural sweetness is stored for a very long time without changing its taste, while counterfeit goods almost always spoil, either begin to ferment, or separate and acquire an unsightly forked texture.
The consistency of liquid bee gold is always quite thick, even if the mass is collected recently. A texture that is too runny indicates that the substance was diluted or collected too early.
The present state is tasty and does not spoil after crystallization. Thicken various varieties can be different, it’s all a matter of storage conditions. The crystals can be either very small or quite large. But there should not be too large sugar “snowflakes” in the bee mass.
The weight of mature honey is at least 1.4 kilograms per liter.

How not to confuse it with a fake?

So, how can you tell if you are looking at a counterfeit product? Notice how the honey lies in the jar. On worthwhile product should not delaminate. The homogeneity of the mass without sediment and foam, uniform color and the absence of large bubbles inside the jar indicate that the honey was stored under the right conditions.

Don't be afraid to taste or even rub the mixture between your fingers. The real delicacy sticks well and forms an adhesive film, but the fake one leaves a feeling of excess moisture.

Honey should not splash when falling from a whisk or spoon. It is easy to distinguish a watery substance from a fake - drop a small drop on a napkin. If a wet mark has formed next to the stain, the mass is clearly diluted. A drop of real delicacy will keep its shape for a long time. This method is good for home use.

When you taste honey, scoop it with a spoon or a special whisk from the very bottom of the jar or other container in which it is poured. This way you can find out if there is a candied layer at the bottom (if the container is opaque). If the bottom is thick and the top is liquid, perhaps this is not a fake, but a mixture of several varieties.

It’s also not worth taking such a product, since mixing old, more mature and fresh honey can lead to a deterioration in taste. Thus, to distinguish a good product from a counterfeit one, ordinary observation will also be required.

If you cannot distinguish a fake from the original on your own, use the advice of experienced beekeepers.

Video “Distinguishing a real product from a fake”

Expert advice on how to distinguish natural honey without buying counterfeit. These recommendations and secrets will help you buy a truly worthwhile product, the taste of which has no equal!

Honey is very useful for colds, it improves immunity and normalizes metabolism. Children especially need this product, it helps them resist diseases and improves brain activity. But all this only applies to natural honey. And in Lately There are a lot of fakes on the market that are difficult to identify at first glance. Those who care about their health should know how to distinguish real honey from fake honey.

When purchasing at the market, you may come across not only a product diluted with sugar syrup, but also an outright counterfeit. Unscrupulous manufacturers may add molasses, gelatin, starch and even sawdust to increase volume.

Honey can be faked even at the production stage. Beekeepers feed bees sugar syrup, and they produce a product that contains almost no nutrients. It's just a sweet treat. You need to know how to distinguish real honey from fake honey so as not to harm your health. To make more profit, some unscrupulous farmers pull out the honeycombs very early. Honey has not yet had time to ripen and remains useless.

How to check if honey is real when purchasing it? At room temperature A fake can be identified by the consistency of the product. Try stirring the honey - it should not foam or have any impurities. If you scoop a little from the jar onto a spoon and swirl it, you will see the quality of the product. Immature and

it will drain quickly. A real healing product should be viscous, roll onto a spoon, and if you want to pour it, it should not break into drops. A thin, even stream forms a small hill on the surface.

Only fresh honey can be liquid. After 3-6 months it should harden and crystallize. Usually in stores it is heated to sell it and it remains liquid for a long time. But such a product does not have any beneficial properties.

How to distinguish real honey from fake honey by taste? For it to be healing, it must contain only plant nectar. That's why real honey smells like flowers and has a slightly bitter taste. If you swallow it, then

you will feel your throat sore. A fake will simply be a sweet delicacy, often mixed with foreign odors and tastes.

If you have already purchased the product and brought it home, how can you distinguish real honey from fake honey? The easiest way is to stir it in water. It should dissolve completely. And to check if there are any impurities, drop a little iodine into the solution. If it turns blue, then there was starch or flour there. Chalk impurities react to vinegar - it will foam and hiss.

How to distinguish real honey from fake? Dilute it with water and add a little ammonia. If molasses is added to it, the solution will turn brown and a precipitate will form. An easier way is to drip honey onto paper. It should not be absorbed and spread over the surface.

It is very important to know how to identify real honey for those who buy it for treatment. It must have bactericidal properties, so a piece of food placed in honey should not spoil for a long time. If it has turned sour, foam and signs of fermentation have appeared, then the product is not suitable for treatment.

Natural honey can only be liquid for a month after it was collected. Honey collection lasts from the end of July to the end of September. If you are offered liquid honey in winter, it is most likely unnatural. By this time, high-quality real honey should thicken and begin to crystallize.

2. Check if the honey is foaming

If honey foams on the surface, it means that fermentation processes are occurring in it. It begins when the volume of water in honey exceeds 20%. This honey is definitely unnatural.

3. Smell the honey

Natural honey always has characteristic odor. If the honey does not smell like anything, it was produced artificially.

4. Check if the honey is separating

Take a close look at the container with honey and check whether the mass is homogeneous. If the honey seems denser at the bottom of the jar and thinner at the top, it is fake. Most likely, the manufacturer added an impurity. Often, unscrupulous manufacturers put a mixture of semolina and molasses at the bottom of the jar.

5. Ignore the color

Color is not an indicator of the quality of honey; it can only indicate its variety. For example, buckwheat and cherry honey are usually dark brown, while acacia honey is light. Other types of honey can be dark amber, amber, light yellow, or even almost white.

It can be interesting to look at familiar things from a different, sometimes bizarre, angle. We usually don’t think about it, but many everyday products are brands promoted by humanity with the inherent characteristics of each of them. valuable properties. For example, bread is perceived as a certain noble product, created by hard human labor, which, even in difficult times, can satisfy a person and satisfy his hunger. Milk, and always with the “country” characteristic, gives strength and health to our main hope in life - children vacationing outside the city with their grandparents. What is honey associated with? Perhaps honey is a healing, mysterious formula of the fields and its main experts and guardians - bees.
Unfortunately, in our times, an aura of mystery and secrecy is inherent not only in honey, but also in any product. It is very difficult to guess from what and under what conditions they make what they sell. There are several relatively simple ways check honey according to some parameters, although not all of them. Only a laboratory can give the most complete assessment. But some things can be detected at home, without worrying about purchasing additional chemical reagents. But first you need to figure out what honey can look like in general.

Two honey states

The vast majority of honey varieties change their appearance: consistency and color within a few months after collection. This process is called crystallization (sugarification). Beekeepers use the term “shrunken honey.” The consistency of honey becomes more like viscous lard with large or small sugar crystals inside. Crystallization does not affect the beneficial properties of honey in any way: they are completely preserved. Basically, honey is candied 1-2 months after collection, approximately in October. But there are also deviations from this, for example, mustard honey in an open container it thickens in 4-5 days, and honey from white stock can last until spring. If honey is hermetically sealed, it remains liquid longer.

Rock honey is a rather rare type of honey, which is collected by wild bees that settle in the crevices of rocks and rocks. This honey contains very little moisture and is so strong that it has to be broken off into pieces. Therefore, it is often stored without containers, simply wrapped in something.

Candied honey is more difficult to counterfeit, because it is not easy to imitate this state in appearance. When buying honey in winter, it is better not to take liquid honey - there is too high a chance that the honey is not real or has been removed from the crystallized state by heating, which has a detrimental effect on the beneficial properties of the product. In the summer, shriveled honey can be suspected of being last year’s or even older.

Learning to distinguish varieties

Often sellers pass off a less popular variety as a more popular one. Therefore, it would be nice to have an idea of how to distinguish one honey from another. Honey varieties vary depending on the type of plant whose pollen predominates in the product. They can be distinguished by color, aroma and taste. This is a very difficult matter. There is no pure honey collected from only one type of plant, because you can’t tell the bees “don’t go there, go here” and you can’t force them to pollinate only one specific field. In addition, the color and even taste of honey depends on the area and the time of year the nectar is collected. Remembering the subtlest shades of taste and distinguishing the predominance of one variety over another is an even more difficult task. However, it is possible to describe a very wide range of colors for each variety. MirSovetov will consider only a few varieties that can be found on the shelves.
Acacia. Freshly collected honey is transparent. When candied, it is white and resembles snow.

Buckwheat. The color of honey made from the nectar of buckwheat flowers is dark yellow, often with a noticeable reddish tint, sometimes dark brown.

Clover. Color from light amber to rich amber.

Forest. The color varies from faint yellow to light brown and reddish.

Lime. The color is most often from white to amber, and can be transparent. Yellowish and greenish shades are also acceptable.

Lugovoi. The color is light tones from yellow to brown.

Crimson. Although raspberries are red, their flowers are white, which is why the honey is light in color.

Methods for determining unripe honey

The bees seal the collected honey in honeycombs with wax caps. But they do not do this right away, but allow excess moisture to evaporate; along the way, the workers supply the honey with special substances that, by killing bacteria and microorganisms, do not allow the honey to spoil. It turns out that already assembled and almost finished product bees bring it to perfect condition. This process is called honey ripening. In market conditions, when everyone is striving to profit faster and more, many unscrupulous beekeepers empty the hives long before the bees consider it ready. This allows them, to the detriment of the quality of the product, to begin selling it earlier than others, and the bees, left completely without honey, instinctively begin to harvest it more actively. Why is unripened honey bad? The main thing is that it contains too much moisture. And the point here is not even that you overpay for plain water, even worse, the quality of the product suffers. Such honey is not stored for a long time, it quickly begins to ferment and changes its taste and healing qualities. The main thing that indicates the immaturity of honey is an excess of water in the product. This is what MirSovetov suggests to determine using the methods below.

Good honey can be stored for a very long time if it is kept in an inert environment that does not interact with the product. It is better not to use iron containers that are not coated with enamel; they react with their contents. Instead of plastic, it is better to use ceramic or wooden dishes for storage. In the old days, beekeepers stored honey in wooden barrels from linden, properly coated with wax. The honey in them did not spoil for several hundred years. Honey was revered by the ancient Greeks and Egyptians as the food of the gods. In the tombs of Egyptian pharaohs, pots of honey were found, which has retained its food qualities to this day.

By thickness and viscosity. Ripe honey is quite thick and flows down very beautifully: in whole wide ribbons or elastic threads. To check the density, the following procedure is carried out at a temperature of about 20 degrees. Scoop up honey with a tablespoon and then begin to rotate it, holding it horizontally. Ripe honey, finding itself alternately on the spoon and then under it, when the spoon is turned over, only has time to begin to stretch, hanging down from it; the viscous ribbon, once at the bottom, wraps around the spoon when turning. As a result, the spoon will be under layers of honey on all sides and will be wrapped in them. If you stop rotating the spoon, the honey will lazily drain from it, not immediately merging with the honey in the jar, and will spread, leaving a slide on the surface. If the honey is immature, then when rotated it will flow down without stopping, it will look more like glue. As a result, the streams are thin, do not stretch, often break off, and perhaps even drip. And the surface of the honey quickly levels out.
By weight and volume. Honey contains many particles that are heavier than water. 1 liter of honey should weigh at least 1.4 kg; in extreme cases, you can risk purchasing a product weighing at least 1.2 kg. per liter If the weight is less, then most likely the honey contains too much water, which makes it so light. When weighing in containers, do not forget that the container itself, especially if it is glass or iron, has significant weight. Therefore, first weigh the empty container, and the resulting weight must be subtracted from the result.
Paper Wetting Test. Place a little honey on some recycled paper, such as newspaper. If the drop begins to spread and the paper around it becomes wet, this indicates that the honey contains too much water or that the honey is unnatural. Real honey will not wet the newspaper, and the drop will be elastic.
By water absorption. If you dip a piece in honey soft bread, then it will not get wet, maybe even become harder, because honey is very hygroscopic and well absorbs moisture and odors from the environment, practically dehydrating everything around. If the bread is wet, it means the product is spoiled.
"Carbonated" honey. Look carefully at the surface of the honey. If you see a slight movement of bubbles popping up from the inside, foam on the surface, it means that the honey has fermented due to humidity, a lack of protective substances due to its immaturity. Fermentation is also indicated by the sour smell and alcoholic taste of honey. Such honey is spoiled and is not suitable for food without heat treatment, which will devalue all the beneficial properties of honey.
Two layers. If you are going to purchase already candied honey and find that it has evenly separated into two layers of different density, then know that this is most often caused by the immaturity of the honey. If you are not sure of the quality, then it is better not to take such honey.

Methods for determining other additives

To prevent the buyer from noticing obvious signs of a spoiled product, sellers sometimes resort to various tricks. They add something to honey that was never in it. This makes the honey good natural look, masking his initially poor condition. You can try to identify some of the sellers' tricks using the following methods.
Determination of foreign sediment. If in a glass warm water add a tablespoon of honey, it should completely dissolve, sometimes making the water slightly cloudy. To be sure, you can heat the water to 50 degrees to help the honey particles melt and mix in the water. If you find that after dissolving in water, a precipitate appears that falls to the bottom or floats up, then this indicates the presence of foreign impurities in the honey.
Definition of chalk additive. The presence of chalk is determined using an acid, such as acetic acid. When chalk interacts with acetic acid, a reaction occurs with intense release of carbon dioxide, and a hissing sound can be heard. In water it looks like boiling. For testing it is better to take vinegar essence, not acid diluted with water. The reaction may not be noticeable if there is too little chalk or the acid does not reach it. To be safe, it is better to stir a little honey in water, wait until the chalk precipitates, carefully drain the water, leaving the chalk at the bottom, obtaining a concentration of chalk sufficient for the experiment.
Definition of starch additive. You can detect the addition of starch by dropping a little iodine into the honey. When iodine interacts with starch, chemical reaction, and iodine changes color to blue. The more intense the color, the more starch the product contained. There is no starch in natural honey, and a drop of iodine will remain unchanged in color. To make the test more reliable, it is better to dilute a little honey with water in a ratio of 1/2. Bring this solution to a boil and drop a little iodine into it. If the honey contained flour instead of starch, the result would be exactly the same.
Determination of starch syrup. It is detected when it interacts with ammonia. The latter reacts with sulfuric acid, which is used in the production of molasses and in very small quantities stays in it food product. Ammonia is added dropwise to a 50% aqueous solution of honey. If the solution changes color to brown and a precipitate of the same color falls out, then the honey has been “flavored” with molasses.

Identifying artificial honey

Organoleptic test. Simply put, you need to taste the honey. Natural honey should have a pleasant, slightly tart taste, it should completely melt in the mouth, leaving no sediment, solid particles, or strong crystals on the tongue. There cannot be anything in natural honey that does not dissolve in the mouth. You can also feel slight irritation of the mucous membranes of the throat and nose, burning, tingling - this is also a good sign of natural honey. If you feel the taste of caramel, then most likely it is heated honey. Such a product loses all its beneficial properties due to heat treatment. They heat it in order to pass off the already crystallized honey as just collected.
According to heterogeneity. If you look closely, natural honey will not be too homogeneous: you can distinguish wax and pollen in it in the form of small particles evenly distributed in the thickness of the honey. Sometimes (if the honey is poorly filtered) insect wings and other things may appear natural material. If there are no particles at all, then the honey is initially unnatural, but is made from molasses, vegetable juices and other substitute products. This cocktail is not harmful. But there is nothing from honey there at all. During storage artificial honey does not crystallize.

Soft falsification

Among all natural varieties of honey, honeydew is distinguished because of its slightly different nature. Honeydew honey is of animal origin (it is collected from the sugary secretions of other insects), as well as plant (made from the sticky secretions of plants and trees, which often fall to the ground, where bees pick them up). This honey appears in the combs if there is not enough nectar in the emission zone or there is none at all. The taste of such honey is bitter, its color ranges from greenish to dark, sometimes it is brown or even black. This is one of the most viscous types of honey, although if it contains a proportion of flower varieties, it can be less thick and lighter in color. The disadvantages of honeydew honey include its weak antibacterial properties and sometimes bad taste. The origin and short shelf life of this variety also do not make it popular, although it has its own unique set of useful microelements.

Australian scientists in Queensland have discovered that bees have the ability to count, but only up to 4. They made their way out of the hive through a dark tunnel, where they placed bright markers that were easily visible to the honey plants. Nectar was constantly located on one of them. When the bees got used to it, the treat was removed. However, despite the fact that the scientists changed the shape, distance between them and the location of all the markers in the tube, the bees continued to show increased interest in the one that previously contained nectar. But if the nectar was further than the 4th marker, then the bees do not pay attention to the mark freed from nectar.

Detection of honeydew honey. Add 96% honey to a 50% aqueous solution of honey. ethanol. It is not recommended to take a different concentration of alcohol, otherwise the reaction may not occur. To one part of honey solution you need to add 10 parts of alcohol. For the reaction to occur, the mixture must be shaken several times. If the solution became very cloudy and a white cloud appeared, the flower honey was diluted with honeydew. If flakes of sediment fall out, then there may be no flower honey at all. In clean flower honeys the appearance of turbidity is possible, but it will be weakly expressed. Thus, it is impossible to test varieties of honey that, like honeydew, contain a large amount of nitrogenous substances. These include buckwheat and heather honey.
They also try not to buy another “type” of honey, which, unlike honeydew, is unnatural, is sugar honey. This kind of honey appears in the combs if the beekeeper feeds his honey plants with sugar syrup. This allows you to quickly fill the hives with a low-quality product, which in terms of its indicators is much closer to regular sugar than honey, and is sold at the price of the latter. At first glance, this honey can be classified as natural, but experts clearly classify it as a counterfeit product.
Revealing sugar honey . It can be distinguished without additional experiments. Sugar honey is suspiciously white. If you try it, it looks more like sweetened water, the taste is relatively fresh and empty, it lacks the astringency characteristic of this product. The aroma is also weakened. Fresh honey It is liquid, and the one that has lain has a gelatinous consistency and weakly crystallizes. At home, you can test sugar honey using milk. If added to hot cow's milk a little sugar honey, it will curdle.

Of course, the methods discussed do not allow us to identify all falsifications. After all, there is also the threat of honey becoming infected with bee diseases and poisoning from “drunk” honey, the nectar for which is collected from trees that are poisonous to humans. Identifying these threats is only possible in laboratory conditions. But MirSovetov hopes that at least some guidance for quality honey this article helped determine.