About Honey
What is honey?
Honey is a delicious gift from the bees, made using nectar from plants. It comes in a variety of textures, tastes and colours depending on what the honey bees have been foraging on. Whether it’s drizzled, spread or swirled, it’s irresistibly tasty.
Why do Bees make Honey?
Honey bees are one of the few insects that do not hibernate in winter, instead they stay awake in their hive. In the summer months when there are lots of flowers around, they make honey so that they’ll have something to eat in winter, when there are no flowers to forage from. Nectar from flowers is the base of all honey – it contains about 80% water, along with complex sugars. If left in its natural state, nectar would ferment, so in order to store the sugars to use during the winter, bees evaporate much of the water content, which converts the nectar into honey. They take the honey and cap it off in a beeswax cell, sealing it into the honeycomb so they can eat it later.
How do Bees make Honey?
Firstly, they land on a flower or a plant, suck the nectar up and store it in their stomachs. Back at the hive, they convert this nectar into honey, once the worker bees have ripened it. They ripen the nectar by taking a drop into their stomachs where enzymes turn the nectar into watery honey. They then deposit it into a honeycomb cell in the hive and the bees fan the watery honey with their wings until most of the water evaporates and it becomes thick and golden. They then seal the top of the honeycomb with wax, so it keeps for winter. The wax comes from the bees too, from four pairs of wax glands on the underside of their abdomens.
Why are there so many different types of Honey?
We all know that honey is made by bees, after collecting nectar from flowers. But did you know that different nectars produce different types of honey? Which is lucky for us, because this means that we get loads of different flavours to try! The different flowers that honeybees visit can affect the colour, flavour and even aroma of the honey produced. Clever beekeepers can control the types of flowers that bees visit and, in turn, effect the type of honey produced.
To try these differences for yourself, try comparing our Orange Blossom honey, which has a fresh, fruity tanginess, to our Clover Honey, which has a more buttery vanilla taste. If you want to go to the complete other end of the spectrum, try a Manuka Honey. This comes from New Zealand and is made from the nectar of the flowers of the Manuka tree. Its taste is like nothing else – slightly herby, earthy and rich.
To try these differences for yourself, try comparing our Orange Blossom honey, which has a fresh, fruity tanginess, to our Clover Honey, which has a more buttery vanilla taste. If you want to go to the complete other end of the spectrum, try a Manuka Honey. This comes from New Zealand and is made from the nectar of the flowers of the Manuka tree. Its taste is like nothing else – slightly herby, earthy and rich.
