September is celebrated
as Honey month.
The only reason
for being a bee that I know of is making honey... and the only
reason for making honey is so I can eat it." -
Winnie the Pooh,
House at Pooh Corner by A.A. Milne
Honey. It is sweet,
timeless and every flower in the middle of summer. It is a timeline
into history. It is the only food that will never spoil. It is
comfort, a yummy topping on toast, pure and unprocessed and soothing
in tea. It is Aristotle's nectar of the gods. It is our memory
bringing us back in time to Winnie the Pooh's passion, liquid
gold, great in cooking and the only human food produced by insects.
It is primarily composed of glucose, fructose, water, enzymes,
minerals, vitamins...delicious, a lover's calling with a simple,
Honey, be mine.
There are many legends
surrounding honey, including the origin of the word "honeymoon".
In Eastern cultures as a means of celebrating their union, love
and respect for one another, newlyweds would have a spoonful of
honey poured into their coupled palms. The couple would then lick
the honey off each other's hand. This ensured that the man would
never raise a hand to his bride, and that she would forever speak
loving words to him. Legend also says that Cupid dipped his arrows
in honey prior to striking lovers and thus the bee became a symbol
of Cupid. Peasants paid German feudal lords in honey during the
11th Century. Honey
was also thought to possess the strength to mark a man a genius
and forever happy. For this reason, certain cultures still practice
the tradition of lightly gracing a newborn child's lips with the
sweet nectar.
Egyptian hieroglyph's
featuring bees were found in a temple built in Cairo in 24,000
B.C. The Egyptians not only used honey as a sweetener but also
in embalming, for money, and as an offering to their gods. The
bee continued to be important throughout Egyptian history: the
pharaoh of Lower Egypt during the First Dynasty (3,200 B.C.) used
the bee as his emblem. Honey has been written about since the
21st Century B.C. in Babylonian and Sumerian cuneiform writings
as well as in India. The ancient Assyrians, Babylonians, and Sumerians
poured honey on thresholds and some sacred objects for good luck.
Bee keeping was depicted in wall paintings found in Spanish caves,
dating back to 7,000 B.C. The Greeks and the Romans both offered
honey to the gods and their ancestors. They also extensively used
honey in their cooking.
The importance of honey
is lauded in many of the classic Greek texts of Aristotle, Plato,
Hippocrates and others. The Romans spread honey throughout their
empire. Honey was quickly absorbed into the empire's culture,
cooking and folklore. In the Old Testament of the bible, the region
now known as Israel and Palestine was called "the land of milk
and honey." Bee keeping became even more important once Christianity
became a fully developed religion due to the need for beeswax
church candles. The bee was used on Pope Urban VIII's insignia.
Napoleon believed that bee was a sign of power, emblazoning the
bee on his robs and flags.
The beehive runs like
an well-organized manufacturing plant. The bees have to take the
nectar from about two million flowers just to make one pound of
honey. A bee will visit between 50 and 100 flowers in one trip
alone. In order to get from flower to flower, the bee flies roughly
15 miles per hour. Luckily each bee has four wings. After all
this work, the average bee only produces 1/12 of a teaspoon of
honey in its entire lifetime. When the bee gets back to the hive
there is still a lot for the bee to get done. Its home is a wax
honeycomb and each cell has six sides. When they want to communicate
with their fellow bees, they go dancing. They have numerous different
dance moves, each one communicates a different signal to the other
bees: when the nectar is out, how far it is to the nectar, and
where the pollen is.
There is a social order
in the hive in which a division of labor between the various bees
is set. The colony has one queen bee, 500 to 1,000 drone bees,
and between 30,000 to 60,000 worker bees. The queen bee is fed
on royal jelly and is the only sexually active female bee in the
hive. Drones are male bees without stingers and their only purpose
is to mate with the queen. A few weeks after hatching the queen
mates once, receiving millions of sperm cells from the drones,
which will last for the entire two years of the queen's life.
The queen can lay 3,000 eggs in one day. The worker bees are sexually
undeveloped female bees. Their purpose is to collect nectar, cool
the hive by fanning their wings, make the wax comb, clean the
hive, feed the larvae, and guard the hive. The worker bees also
pollinate flowers. This is actually maybe their most important
purpose since bees pollinate about one-third of the vegetables
we eat. Pollination is the process of fertilizing a flowering
plant. Pollen is transferred by the bees from the anthers of one
flower to ovules another flower or sometimes that same flower.
Honey comes in three
delicious varieties. Comb honey comes in its natural form; honey
in its wax comb. Both the honey and the wax are edible. Liquid
honey is removed from the honeycomb by straining or centrifugal
force and it is free from any discernible crystals. Whipped or
creamed honey is liquid honey in its crystallized state. The crystallization
process is controlled so that honey can be spread easily. The
flavor of the honey is a result of the nectar of the flowers the
bees collect. The flavors vary from fruity, woodsy, herbaceous,
aromatic, mild, or spicy. The color also depends on the flower
in which the bee collects the nectar. Typically, the darker colored
honeys are full bodied, and the lighter colored honeys are mild.
You can replace honey
for sugar in most recipes. Since honey is sweeter than sugar,
you will need to reduce the amount called for in the recipe by
about one-third. In addition, honey is part water so you will
need to reduce the liquid called for in the recipe by one-fifth
in baked goods. Honey browns quickly in the oven so reduce the
oven's temperature by 25 degrees in baked good recipes. Honey
helps to keep baked goods fresh longer because it retains moisture.
Honey helps keep vinaigrettes stable because of its emulsifying
qualities.
Babies under the age
of one year should never be fed honey. Honey can contain trace
amounts of botulism spores. Babies have a propensity to be at
risk to these spores because their immune system is undeveloped.
Recipes>>>
Vinaigrettes, Honey
Baked Apples, Honey Chicken Legs, Honey Yogurt with Berries, Lavender
Honey Mousse
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