Honey is an amazing food created by our honey bees.

Most of COBA's members choose to not pasteurize the honey they collect, and to minimally filter it. That means that each jar will be a little different, and you can enjoy all that nature has to offer.

In one foraging session, a honey bee typically gathers 25 to 40 micro grams (µg) of nectar from flowers she visits. If the nectar flow is really high, she can carry as much as 70 µg -- which is about 85% of what she weighs.

On a typical nectar foraging event, the bee visits upwards of 500 flowers before she heads back to the hive. One really great design in her genes is that she visits the same types of flowers, which ensures that the pollen she spreads goes to the same types of flowers (this is called floral fidelity).

And on a good day, each forager bee can make ten foraging sessions.

During a bee's lifetime, she will collect enough nectar to make 1/12 of an ounce of honey.

The bees add a number of enzymes to the collected nectar, including invertase and diastase. These help break down the large sucrose molecules of nectar into the smaller sugars of fructose and glucose. When the honey is fully matured, it will have around 1.3% sucrose.

They also add glucose oxidase which converts the glucose into glycolic acid and hydrogen peroxide to lower the pH of the honey, enabling it to be stored for longer. The hydrogen peroxide and high sugar levels are what helps give honey its healing properties.

The nectar is deposited into a cell where the bees evaporate the water in the honey to get the moisture content below 18.6%, ensuring the honey does not spoil or ferment. Once there, the bees add a wax cap and move on to other activities (bees only live around 6 weeks, so they have to get a lot done in very short lives).

The average composition of 490 samples of honey tested by the USDA① showed:

Component Average Range Sugars: Fructose (aka, levulose) 38.19%27.25% - 44.26%Glucose (aka, dextrose) 31.28%22.03% - 40.75% Maltose②7.31%2.74% - 15.98% Sucrose1.31%0.25% - 7.75% Higher sugars③1.50%0.13% - 8.49% Other aspects Moisture 17.2%13.4% - 22.9%pH④3.913.42 - 6.10

Honey consists of a number of products. There are a number of factors which contribute to the color:

• Higher levels of these increase the chances for lighter colored honey:
  • Sucrose
  • Glucose (aka, dextrose)
  • Hydrogen ion concentration (i.e., pH)
  • Fructose (aka, levulose)
• Higher levels of these increase the chances for darker colored honey:
  • Total acid and free acid levels
  • Nitrogen
  • Ash
  • Maltose②
  • Disaccharides and trisaccharides

Overall, the specific amounts of each of these materials lends to a unique flavor which can change on a jar-by-jar basis.

There are a number of factors which contribute to this. One of those is the sugar mix:

• Higher levels of these sugars increase the chances your honey will crystallize:
  • Glucose (aka, Dextrose)
  • Sucrose
• Higher levels of these sugars decrease the chances your honey will crystallize:
  • Maltrose
  • Disaccharides and trisaccharides

Also, if there are pollens or other natural products which were not super filtered out, these will help aid in crystallization. Most beekeepers choose to minimially filter their honey, so these are quite common.

Here are some options:

Some appreciate this better than liquid honey. In England, it is sold as crunchy honey.

One relatively popular approach is to leave your honey in the car in the Summer. When your car heats up from the greenhouse effect, your honey will naturally de-crystallize.

Slightly loosen the honey’s lid. If it is to tightly closed, the pressure from heating the jar of honey could crack the jar.

And make sure your car is not too hot (as can happen in Arizona).

Never use a microwave to re-liquify the honey. In addition to making the honey too hot, which can make it dangerous to handle, the microwaving process will damage the good parts of the honey.

Below are the recommended decrystallization instructions.

1. Put the bottle of honey in a saucepan (or a pot). The pan needs to be deep enough that the lid on the honey jar is below the top of the pan.
2. Fill the pan with water so that it is close to the bottom of the honey jar's lid, but not above the bottom of the lid.If the water level is at or above the honey jar’s lid as the jar cools, water from the pan could be sucked into the jar. This can increase the honey’s moisture content and cause it to spoil.
3. Slightly loosen the honey's lid. If it is to tightly closed, the pressure from heating the jar of honey could crack the jar.
4. Remove the honey from the saucepan.
5. Heat the pan of water on the stove until it is 95° - 104° F (35° - 40° C).
6. Once the water is around 104°, turn the fire off. You do not want the water to be too hot as it could damage the good stuff in the honey.
7. Gently add the honey jar into the pan of warm water, and let it sit there for a few hours. If that doesn't de-crystallize all the honey, repeat the steps above, starting with step 4.
8. Re-tighten the lid on the jar of honey.

Honey typically does not need to be stored in specific conditions. However, these guidelines will help you keep it best:

1. Do not store honey in the refrigerator, even after it has been opened.
2. Do not store the jar on stone countertops. The stone has the tendency to draw heat from the jar, helping it to crystalize.