Tai Lam Chung Mountain Pure Honey | Honeycomb / Local Farm / Per Bottle (600g)

A honeycomb is a mass of hexagonal prismatic wax cells built by honey bees in their nests to contain their larvae and stores of honey and pollen.

Honeycombs are six-prism-shaped wax cells that bees build in their nests to house larvae and store honey and pollen. Before the invention of the honey extraction machine in the past, almost all the honey produced was nest honey. Comb honey is edible honey that is well preserved in the comb. Compared with isolated honey, comb honey has less water content. Due to the natural protective barrier of beeswax, it maintains the flavor and aroma of honey, and can be stored for a long time without deterioration. The price is higher than ordinary honey. Today, because it is more convenient to eat, most of the honey produced is isolated honey, but comb honey is also common, and it is also mixed with isolated honey to make mixed block honey for sale.

Beekeepers may remove the entire honeycomb to harvest honey. Honey bees consume about 8.4 lb (3.8 kg) of honey to secrete 1 lb (450 g) of wax, and so beekeepers may return the wax to the hive after harvesting the honey to improve honey outputs. The structure of the comb may be left basically intact when honey is extracted from it by uncapping and spinning in a centrifugal machine, more specifically a honey extractor. If the honeycomb is too worn out, the wax can be reused in a number of ways, including making sheets of comb foundation with hexagonal pattern. Such foundation sheets allow the bees to build the comb with less effort, and the hexagonal pattern of worker-sized cell bases discourages the bees from building the larger drone cells. Fresh, new comb is sometimes sold and used intact as comb honey, especially if the honey is being spread on bread rather than used in cooking or as a sweetener.

The mechanism of honey to promote health is complex

A variety of enzymes and minerals contained in honey can improve human immunity after synergistic effects. The mechanism of honey to promote health is more complex, it is a comprehensive conditioning of the human body, rather than simply acting on a certain function.

Honey is brewed by bees from pollen, nectar and other secretions with a water content of about 80% from the flowers of plants. When bees gather honey, they use a straw-like muzzle to suck the nectar or other secretions from the roots of the stamens into the honey stomach that stores nectar. A honey bee collects an average of 40mg of honey (approximately equivalent to a drop of water) at a time, and needs to visit more than a hundred flowers. During the honey harvesting season, a worker bee has to fly dozens of km every day, and the high-intensity labor makes their life span only 20 to 40 days. If there is not enough nectar nearby, bees will also collect some "nectar" and "honeydew" as raw materials for processing. Honeydew is the sugary sap secreted by the epidermis of some plants; honeydew is the excrement of insects such as aphids and whiteflies. The process by which worker bees transform and condense collected nectar into honey is called honey making. When the nectar is sucked into the honey sac by the forager bee, it is mixed with saliva containing invertase. In about 30 minutes, sucrose is fermented into glucose and fructose. During the honey making process, the bees will repeatedly suck in and spit out the nectar, and flap their wings to fan the air to remove the moisture in the hive. In the process of sucking and spitting, the water content is reduced from 60-80% to below 20%, and finally the honey is spit into the nest hole and sealed with beeswax, waiting for maturity. The temperature in the hive is often kept at about 35°C, and the maturing process of honey generally takes 5 to 7 days.

The honey has been concentrated or matured by natural sealing, and the moisture content can be lower than 20%. Bacteria and yeast cannot survive in the honey, so the honey does not need to be stored in the refrigerator. Some anaerobic bacteria (such as Botulinum toxin) can exist in the form of inactive spores, because the digestive organs such as the stomach and intestines of infants are too immature, and the secretion of gastric acid is poor, so babies under one year old should not eat honey that has not been sterilized. Spores in honey do not multiply to produce toxins, and under normal circumstances, anaerobic bacteria in honey do not have the danger of multiplying in the human body. Honey that has not been sealed and matured and has not been concentrated will quickly ferment and deteriorate at room temperature due to its high moisture content, so it still needs to be stored in the refrigerator at low temperature.

The honey that has been naturally sealed and matured is called "raw honey" in European and American countries; the honey that has been heated and concentrated is called "cooked honey". The heat-concentrated cooked honey can reduce the water content to less than 20% in just two to three days, and the temperature during the processing will affect the enzyme activity and flavor contained in the honey. The raw honey that is naturally sealed and matured has not been heated and concentrated. When the bees have finished collecting honey, they will use their wings to remove excess water. After the water content of the honey drops below 20%, they will spit out wax and seal it. If the humidity in the air is high, it may be Prolonging to more than 50 days could successfully dehydrate the honey.

Honey is a supersaturated solution of sugar, and it is easy to crystallize at 10-15 degrees Celsius. The crystallization is glucose, and the part that does not crystallize is mainly fructose. When heated, the crystals will return to liquid again, so it is not a quality problem. People sometimes distinguish pure honey from sweetened honey by whether it crystallizes at low temperature. However, filtering out impurities in the honey can also prevent the honey from crystallizing, so this method is not reliable.

The process of beekeeping to obtain honey

• From November to March, the beehives are kept indoors, and the temperature and light are suitable for the bees to spend the winter.
• Between April and May, the queen bee starts to lay eggs, and after 3 weeks, the worker bees start to work. Each beehive needs about 20,000 to 30,000 worker bees.
• From May to June, the beehives are placed outdoors to collect honey. After the nest boards are full of honey, the activities of the bees are controlled by smoke, and the nest boards are taken out to obtain honey with a centrifugal force separator.
• June to November is the rest period, and the honey collected by the bees is used by themselves.

Medicinal

Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) view: Traditional Chinese medicine believes that honey is sweet and flat in nature and has a curative effect on abdominal pain, dry cough, and constipation.

In medicine, it can be used to treat cough. As a topical remedy, honey can promote wound healing and treat ulcers. In traditional Chinese medicine, it is often made into honeyed pills together with the powder of Chinese herbal medicines, which is called honey refining. Stir-fried honey can be used as a suppository to treat constipation; orally, it has the effect of moistening dryness and laxative, but it can also alleviate the laxative effect of laxatives (rhubarb and mirabilite).

Special Note: Do not put it in the refrigerator after opening.

Food taboo

1. Infants under 1 year old, diabetics, and liver cirrhosis patients should not eat honey. In addition, honey is easily contaminated by botulism. Meat products seasoned with honey should not be vacuum-packed before complete sterilization to avoid the growth of botulism.
2. Vegans also avoid honey and replace it with maple syrup because they believe honey is a product of cruelty to bees.

Special matters: You can't put it in the refrigerator after opening. The various enzymes and minerals contained in honey can improve human immunity after synergistic effects.

Cantonese Dietary Recipe:

English CookPad：

Harvest Season: available throughout the year