What is mixed in honey. The best ways to test honey for naturalness

In order to determine whether real honey is in front of you or fake, it is not at all necessary to take it to the laboratory for analysis. You can also evaluate the quality at home using our instructions.

Assessment of honey quality by external signs

Consistency of honey

In real honey, it is homogeneous, without impurities and stratifications, there should not be any sediment at the bottom. Depending on the season, it can be liquid (from young honey collected in summer) or thick, so-called "candied" honey. Such crystallized honey, as a rule, becomes lighter, cloudy.

In this regard, the quality of liquid honey, which can be seen on store shelves in winter, is questionable. Its liquid consistency suggests that the product was falsified or that honey could be “dissolved” (melted) to give it a marketable appearance. Although it is also possible that the bees were fed sugar.

The only exception is acacia honey, which crystallizes slowly and can retain a liquid consistency longer.

Fluidity of honey

The indicator is effective in assessing the quality of fresh honey. If you lower a spoon into a container with honey, scoop it up a little and lift it up, it will stretch for a long time, flowing in an even stream onto a plate, without breaking and forming a hill. The last drop springs back and pulls back to the spoon.

When you turn the spoon around its axis, natural honey is wound around it, while the fake one will drain. And if you turn the jar of honey upside down, the air bubble (it should be one and large) should rise in the direction from the lid to the bottom of the jar.

There is another trick: a drop of honey can be rubbed between your fingers. The natural one is completely absorbed into the skin, the fake one forms a lump and will roll.

Taste

Real honey is distinguished not only by a pleasant sweet taste, astringency, but also by a slight bitterness in the aftertaste. After a quality product, there must be a sore throat.

Aroma

Natural honey from a fake can be distinguished by smell. In a quality product, it is unobtrusive, natural, floral. The counterfeit smells very sugary, unnatural, sharp, maybe an admixture of caramel.

Color

Depending on which honey plant the nectar was collected from, honey can change its color from light yellow to dark brown. So, linden honey is amber, buckwheat honey is brown, and flower honey is light yellow.

If you see white honey, it can be not only acacia, but also a product obtained by processing sugar. In this case, the bees are fed sugar syrup, which they process like normal nectar. And although it is difficult to distinguish natural from fake honey even in laboratory conditions, in terms of its health benefits, it cannot be compared with natural honey.

The brown color of honey can be achieved not only by collecting nectar from buckwheat fields, but also by melting last year's honey. At the same time, it heats up over 40 ° C and loses all its useful properties. Be vigilant if such honey is offered to you in spring or early summer.

The situation with May honey, which many lovers of this delicacy are waiting for, is also interesting. Theoretically, of course, you can pump out in May. But the problem is that this honey is necessary for the bee family in order to feed the brood. If you take honey from the family in May, the worker bees will be weak, lethargic, which will affect a significant decrease in the amount of the collected product. Therefore, it is unlikely that a good owner will make such sacrifices and risks. Be carefull.

Chemical laboratory at home

In addition to assessing the organoleptic properties of the delicacy you purchased, you can conduct a small experiment at home to identify impurities in honey.

What only unscrupulous sellers add to honey: molasses, chalk, plaster, and starch. But you can expose scammers to clean water.

memo

Buy honey only from trusted beekeepers and in season. Remember that they do not begin to pump out honey until June, when the first plants begin to bloom. Then go shopping. Moreover, it is better to buy for the whole year, and for wholesale you can ask for a discount.

Another way to check honey for quality is the presence of honey in the honeycombs of the beekeeper. It is almost impossible to fake it, and in the absence of such, one can doubt the quality of honey.

In order not to be deceived when buying, please note that 1 liter of mature honey must weigh at least 1.4 kg.

If a piece of candied honey is set on fire, it should silently melt. Hissing and crackling will give out a fake with a head.

In order for honey to bring only benefits to your health, do not be too lazy to evaluate the quality of the purchase before use. And if necessary, you can take the honey to the laboratory for expert quality assessment.

Subscribe to our channel atTelegram groups in

Natural honey has many valuable properties that turn the bee gift not only into a delicacy, but also into a delicious medicine. With honey, cold symptoms are cured faster, it is useful for many systemic diseases, it helps to get rid of excess weight. The waste product of bees is even added to cosmetics. All healing properties are guaranteed, if only the sweetness is real.

Therefore, before buying, it will be useful to learn how to check honey for naturalness, because it is often faked for financial gain.

Checking the correctness of honey

According to historical data, the beginning of the falsification of honey dates back to 1855. Since then, fraudsters have improved their techniques so much that sometimes only a laboratory can confirm the reliability of a test. Today, bee products can be purchased in different places, these are markets, shops, fairs, exhibitions.

However, those who understand the varieties and quality indicators of delicacy try to purchase it from a trusted seller. This method can be called a guarantee against buying a fake, because a decent owner will not deceive a regular buyer. But even in this case, it is useful to know the criteria for determining the quality of a product. There are two of them - according to external signs and with the help of additional means.

How to check honey for naturalness by external signs?

Harmony of taste

When buying an amber mass, you must definitely try it. If it is natural, the taste will be pleasantly sweet, a little tart. Aftertaste - floral or herbal sound, depending on the honey plants from which the nectar is collected. Natural delicacy melts on the tongue, leaves no sediment, does not crystallize. Extraneous taste notes, the presence of sourness, strong bitterness indicate a frank falsification.

Color palette

To identify a fake by the color of honey, you need to familiarize yourself with its varieties, each of them has a characteristic shade:

• linden, acacia, raspberry, apple blossom honey surprises with light amber color and transparency
• a natural product of the buckwheat variety is distinguished by a dark brown tint with reddish notes
• color range of forest forbs - from light yellow to light brownish tones
• nectar collected from sunflowers shines with a sunny yellow tint

Presence of odor

The aroma of a natural product cannot be confused with anything. It is uniquely fragrant, evokes the sensation of the fragrance of flowers and herbs.

A dessert with impurities (sugar, starch, flour, molasses) has no smell. The presence of the smell of caramel indicates the heating of honey, and the cloying sweetness indicates the addition of sugar.

Authenticity by consistency

Liquid honey will be fresh if it is collected in the summer. Over time, the bee gift can be sugared, but you should not be afraid. For literate buyers, this is the most reliable test of product authenticity, so they tend to buy thick honey. Even a skilled counterfeit does not crystallize.

To check the naturalness, use a thin wooden stick or spoon, which is dipped in sweet amber. If you slowly pull out the stick, lifting it up, the honey liquid will stretch for some time in an elastic stream of sufficient width. As the honey flows down, it forms an intricate figure such as a slide or turret, which is slowly absorbed by the surface. The surrogate product is similar in consistency to glue, it will be sprayed with drops from a stick.

How to determine the quality of honey at home?

1. If a wooden pestle is lowered into the nectar and scrolled around its axis in a horizontal plane, the mature honey will neither spread nor blur.
2. The immature waste product of bees is usually divided into two layers - liquid and crystallized. But it could also indicate the addition of water.
3. Bee nectar is heavier than water - one liter of honey (mature) weighs 1.4 kg (excluding tare weight). If the weight of a liter jar of honey is less, then the delicacy was diluted with water
4. A closed container with sweetness is heated in a water bath to 45 degrees. After 10 minutes, you need to open the jar and smell its contents. If there is no smell - it's a fake
5. If the jar of nectar is heated longer, the product of natural production will delaminate. It won't happen with fake.

How to determine the quality of honey at home in simple ways?

• After pouring a little honey into a flat plate, add water in a ratio of 1:3. Then vigorously shake the plate, but in a horizontal plane. The upper part of the natural bee gift will be covered with an unusual pattern, like honeycombs
• Pour some sweetness into the rosette by putting a piece of ordinary bread in it to observe its condition. If after 10 minutes the slice begins to fall apart, then the honey has been generously diluted with sugar syrup. A hardened piece will indicate the naturalness of the product.

• To test honey, you need a stainless steel wire. Having heated it up to redness, it is dipped into a delicacy, then taken out. According to the reaction of the stainless steel, we check the naturalness of honey, its confirmation will be the clean surface of the wire. If the stainless steel is coated, this indicates a poor quality product with impurities.
• The simplest test method will require loose paper, napkins, blotting paper, even a newspaper sheet will do. Pour a little honey on soft paper, a few drops are enough. Around a drop of natural delicacy, the paper will remain dry, and around a fake it will become wet.
• You can put a small spoonful of honey into a glass of warm water and let it stand for an hour to make sure the quality of the purchased bee nectar is very simple. If after an hour sediment appears at the bottom of the glass or the surface of the water is covered with floating flakes, you were given a counterfeit product upon purchase

Check for impurities at home

In order to increase the volume of the product put up for sale, to improve its dubious quality, various ingredients are added to natural mature honey. At home, you can start determining the purity of the purchased goods, but for 100% certainty, you will have to take the honey to the laboratory.

True, rarely anyone does this, but home testing can also recognize a fake:

• if you look at a solution of sweet amber in water against the light, then its turbidity with precipitation will indicate impurities
• if you draw a drop of honey in the palm of your hand with an indelible pencil, the poor quality of the product will show a purple or greenish trace
• if crystals appear in a long-stored delicacy, and a brown liquid forms in the center, the product contains impurities

In addition to the wonderful taste, high-quality honey has a lot of useful and medicinal properties. But this applies only to the natural bee gift, impurities deprive it of all useful qualities.

Sometimes dishonest sellers, trying to get rid of old crystallized honey, melt it before selling it. A sign of heating is a strong transparency of the product and uniformity. Interestingly, protein compounds give natural honey a hazy appearance.

How to identify excess sugar?

The most common ways to deceive lovers of bee sweets include improper feeding of bees. Unscrupulous beekeepers have a secret - to add sugar syrup to the feed. This rewards suspiciously whitish honey with hints of a cloyingly sweet taste, a strongly sweet smell. How to identify a sugar-fortified product?

• You can set fire to a sheet of paper smeared with honey, observing the result. Under the influence of fire, a real delicacy will simply become more liquid, without changing in the future, and the paper will burn. If the bees were given sugar syrup, the honey product will begin to melt, smell like burnt sugar, turning brown
• During long-term storage, liquid nectar will not crystallize, but will become like jelly. This means that the product contains sugar syrup, such honey does not have a tart taste and aroma, only perfect transparency. Strong black tea with a spoonful of "sugar" honey will become darker, but cloudy
• To detect sucrose (cane sugar), silver nitrate is used, it is called lapis. During the experiment, you will have to observe the prepared 5-10 percent honey solution. A silvery-white precipitate covering the bottom of the container will indicate falsification.

Sophisticated testing method

Invert sugar is sometimes added to the amber sweetness; artificial honey is enriched with it. Self-determination of such an additive will be a rather complicated process. You will have to acquire chemical reagents - ether, hydrochloric acid (concentrated), resorcinol.

Honey is triturated with ether, filtered, then to evaporate the solution. The hydrochloric acid concentrate is combined with resorcinol, mixed with the evaporated essential honey. Inverted sugar is indicated by a bright red or orange color of the mass.

Fraudsters have a habit of adding a certain amount of flour or starch to the amber delicacy. Such additives allow you to increase the mass of the product and its density, but a competent buyer has a response - check the honey with iodine. This is the simplest test method, since there are no elements in natural sweetness that react chemically with a solution of iodine tincture.

How to proceed:

• add iodine to the product dissolved in water - drop 2-3 drops
• honey enriched with starch or flour will turn blue
• if you add more iodine to the honey solution, the purchased delicacy will simply shine blue

An intense blue color of the product after testing indicates a high percentage of starch impurities. Even with any color change after testing with iodine, it is safe to talk about additives that are not at all of a bee nature.

If there is no desire to experiment, just hide the jar of bee gift. After two months, take out your favorite treat, if it thickens and crystallizes, then the nectar can be considered natural. If the substance remains liquid in the jar even after several months, the product is rich in fructose. When buying honey, listen to your feelings.

Since ancient times, natural honey has been valued for its medicinal properties. It was used for preventive purposes against many diseases, honey is a rather tasty delicacy. Perhaps this is one of the few products that has so many useful trace elements and vitamins and is also loved by adults and children.

Recently, when buying honey, it needs to be checked, since a lot of falsification has appeared. More precisely, what is sold in the markets is not entirely counterfeit. Some time ago, this product was natural honey, but unscrupulous sellers could heat or dilute it in order to get more benefits. Honey lovers should know the elementary ways to determine the naturalness of honey at home.

Checking honey at home

Checking honey for naturalness at home has many options. The very first indicator of naturalness is the smell. It may be a strong floral scent of linden honey or a faint scent of sunflower seeds, but the aroma will always be present. How to understand and feel a faint smell? To do this, the honey can be slightly warmed up.

How to check honey for naturalness at home in other ways? When honey is heated to a certain temperature, most often 35°C, the product breaks up into several layers. When heated, the moment at which the layers do not stand out is excluded. If the honey remains of a homogeneous structure, it is a fake.

Another factor in the naturalness of honey is its consistency. Most varieties begin to sugar rather quickly, acquiring a firmer texture in the process. How to recognize the correct consistency of nectar? When choosing a honey in market conditions, you should be wary: if the honey is liquid, transparent and clean. This method does not apply to May and acacia honey, since the process of sugaring these varieties is quite long. If there is liquid sunflower or buckwheat chalk on the counter, and it happens at the beginning of summer, you should know that this honey is last year's, warmed up, and, accordingly, has lost all its vitamin properties.

It is recommended to pay attention to the container in which the sweet treat is offered. A plastic bucket or a galvanized container is not the best option for storing honey. In them, the product reacts with the material of the container, this provokes the appearance of bacteria that do not have a very good effect on the body. And it is impossible to find out what kind of honey it is without opening the container.

Another way to identify real honey is to pour a spoonful of honey onto a piece of newspaper. When a spot appears on the back of a leaf, you should know that this is a sign of diluted bee nectar. Natural will lay down on a newspaper with a pyramid, and there will be no stains left after it.

Also, when checking, a piece of ordinary bread will come to the rescue. It is dipped into a container with honey for a few minutes. If it is a fake, the bread loses its original shape and soaks. An indicator of high quality is the hardening of the bakery product.

How to spot fake honey

In order to make sure that no starch or flour has been added to the honey, you need to drop iodine into a small amount of the bee product. The presence of starch will give off a blue color, which will appear as a result of the chemical reaction of iodine.

The vinegar will help bring out the chalk added to the nectar. If chalk is added to honey, after a few drops of vinegar, carbon dioxide will be released, which will sizzle and bubble.

If natural honey is slightly warmed up in a water bath, a small precipitate will be released in the form of glucose, if it is still stirred at the same time, the crystallization process will start.

If solid honey was purchased, it is more difficult to check its quality. For this, a small piece of honey is taken and rubbed between the thumb and forefinger. The natural product will be absorbed into the skin without residue, while the falsified product will roll into a kind of sausage.

Another way to test honey is with an open fire. When a small piece is set on fire, high-quality honey will burn silently, and a fake one will smoke and give off an unpleasant odor.

Determining the naturalness of honey

There are many ways to help determine the naturalness of honey and its quality. At home, you can conduct an experiment for which you need to have: a kitchen scale, a container with a capacity of 1 liter.

How to recognize fake honey

First you need to determine the weight of the container. After the container has been weighed, honey is poured into it. The filled container is placed on the scales. The figure obtained as a result of weighing the container is subtracted from the figure obtained on the scales. Further, the resulting weight of nectar is divided by 1000 (this is the weight of water in a container with a capacity of 1 liter). Each country has standards for the density of quality honey. In the Russian Federation, its range is from 1.4 to 1.6 kg per liter. If you get a result that is below the lower limit, you can determine the immaturity of honey. That is, the product is not of high quality. Exceeding the upper limit may indicate that one of the indicators is incorrect or an error in calculations or when weighing.

How to distinguish good nectar from bad

Good honey, at its first use, should be slightly bitter. It tastes a little tart, the throat begins to tickle after the first spoon. If you find a caramel taste or too obvious bitterness, you should know that this honey has been heat-treated several times, or something has been added to it.

On a note! Good honey is always homogeneous in structure. If there is foam on the top layer, this is an indicator of a bad product that has begun the fermentation process. Such molasses cannot be stored for a long time, it is not recommended to eat it.

Lack of smell is also considered an indicator of bad honey. If a greasy color is added to this, this is a sign of dilution of honey with sugar or sugar syrup. The benefits of such sweetness are minimal, even more harm, especially for people with diabetes. For them, such a honey experience can be deadly.

Honey should be homogeneous. Any sign of a layered product denies its authenticity.

Also, each variety has its own color and texture. A honey that is too dark may indicate that it has been heated, perhaps more than once. With a clear white color, it can be concluded that sugar syrup was added to the bee nectar.

Aroma, color and texture of natural honey

The very first sign of natural honey will be a pronounced floral aroma. In this way, you can check any product anywhere. The only exception is the product from plants and factories with a sealed lid or in tetra-packs.

Natural honey cannot be odorless. The aroma is evaluated in two stages: before the first use and during the test. The fact is that, thanks to the cleavage enzymes that are present in saliva, reacting with it, honey reveals even more intense notes of aroma. If the smell is weak, honey can be slightly heated, but not higher than 40 ° C, as the product will lose all its beneficial properties. If a sour smell appears, the quality of the honey should be rechecked by other methods, since the acid is released during the fermentation process, which means that the bee nectar has not matured, or the fermentation process has begun. Such honey is subject to rejection. It is undesirable to eat it.

Another important indicator of naturalness is color. Shades can vary from light gold, even transparent, to dark brown. These changes are due to many factors:

• Time of honey collection;
• Flower honey plants;
• Storage conditions;
• Place of collection of nectar;
• Weather conditions at the time of collection, etc.

The following varieties have light shades: linden, yellow-clover, May, acacia, sage, meadow, steppe, saturated amber-yellow: mustard, sunflower, cucumber, squash. Such varieties differ in dark shades: buckwheat, chestnut, tobacco, cherry, citrus, etc.

Varieties of honey

Honey can change color when stored or heated for a long time. When sugared, it brightens, and glucose crystals appear, which are large and small.

The consistency of natural honey is different. When pumping out, all honey looks like a liquid, viscous product, which, when filling any container, will fall into a pyramid. Over time, honey begins to sugar, that is, to acquire a firmer consistency. For some varieties, this process begins literally half a month after pumping, other varieties can be in a liquid state for about a year. Anyway, after a certain time, honey crystallizes. The process occurs due to the ratio of water and glucose contained in the product. The higher the glucose content, the faster crystallization will begin. Honey begins to sugar from the bottom of the container, gradually capturing the entire mass. Storage temperature can slow down the crystallization process. If the room in which the honey is located is cool, the sugaring of the honey will begin later. In order to speed up the crystallization process, honey can be warmed up a little, constantly stirring it with a wooden spoon.

Checking honey with a chemical pencil

A very common technique for checking the quality of honey is to check with an indelible pencil. In the recent past, this pencil was called a copy pencil. Some chemical elements were added to his lead, which made it possible to copy handwritten text on a white sheet using a special press.

real honey

To date, the production of chemical pencils has declined significantly, as alternatives have appeared in the form of pens and carbon paper. Experienced beekeepers have learned to use this pencil for their own purposes. With it, you can check the molasses for quality and naturalness. How to identify natural honey with a chemical pencil? To conduct the experiment, a chemical pencil is lowered with a stylus down into a container with honey. If there is a trace left in the product, then it is fake.

Some experts argue that with the help of a chemical pencil it is possible to determine the excess of the water content in the honey. But there are already rebuttals to this assertion. Many experimenters say that the colored trace from the carbon pencil remains in natural products, especially those that have already gone through the process of crystal formation.

So what experiences can be trusted? I would like to note that the chemical pencil leaves a mark on the surface, which is characterized by roughness, unevenness. When determining the effect of a carbon pen on honey, several varieties of various honey were used. Several fakes were also taken. During the experiment, it became clear that the lead of the carbon pencil entered into a positive reaction with all varieties. That is, he showed that natural honey is also a fake.

Note! A chemical pencil will not give an adequate assessment of the quality of honey. After the experiments, it can be said with accuracy that the chemical pencil reacts with any candied honey after applying a few strokes and with honey of a liquid consistency.

All the methods described above help to determine the choice of honey sweetness. But even such a useful product can have drawbacks. The biggest and perhaps the only one is a frequent allergic reaction. It is not the honey itself that provokes it, but the pollen of the flowers from which it was collected. That is, in itself, bee nectar is harmless to the body, the reaction occurs to the color with which the bees have come into contact. Therefore, when using it, you should be extremely careful and remember that allergies may not appear immediately.

Buying honey always requires special vigilance. When choosing a bee product, you need to use all your senses as much as possible: smell, taste, study color and texture. Although, let's be honest, these methods do not give the buyer complete confidence in the quality of the purchased goods. Modern falsifications look very natural, therefore, it is possible to expose an unscrupulous seller without involving experts only with the help of ordinary iodine. How to do it correctly, as well as what the results of the experiment can be - we will tell later in the article.

Unpleasant surprises in honey

Today, many seek to improve their health with natural products. Consequently, the demand for honey is growing, in the unique composition of which the entire periodic table is collected. A pot of this fragrant delicacy, for sure, can be found in every kitchen.

Did you know? In ancient Greece, the immortality of the gods was explained by their addiction to ambrosia. This drink consisted of honey, milk and bee nectar. Pythagoras, Hippocrates and Aristotle spoke about the fact that sweetness produced by bees prolongs life.

Based on this, unscrupulous sellers breed high-quality bee products with various improvised impurities, thus increasing its quantity. In the market, you can be assured of the authenticity of the product, its high quality and omnipotent healing power from all diseases. You should not believe such fairy tales, it is better to see for yourself that you are dealing with real honey.

Indeed, when checking, particles may turn out to be counterfeit:

• starch;
• flour;
• semolina:
• gelatin;
• boiled or raw water;
• sugar syrup;
• powdered sugar;
• molasses;
• saccharin;
• dandelion syrup;
• dried gum (tragacanth);
• wax;
• ash;
• soda;
• paste;
• clay;
• chalk;
• famous fluff;
• food thickeners and baking powder;
• plaster.

As you can see, not all supplements in the surrogate are safe for health. According to experienced beekeepers, a mixture of a small amount of natural honey, water and clay is often found in the markets today. Please note that when producing such "masterpieces", counterfeiters try to preserve the natural honey taste and aroma.
Each of the added third-party ingredients has its own mission in reducing the cost of the bee product, which will be sold at the price of natural. The fact is that these impurities do not have pronounced taste qualities and are easily transformed into a consistency convenient for the merchant. In addition, these are cheap and affordable carbohydrates. Experts call the most harmless way of honey fakes "regrading".

Important! The easiest way to fake light varieties of honey.

This is when cheap varieties of honey are passed off as expensive ones. Often in this role, under the guise of sainfoin, you can be sold a less healing product. Worse, when they begin to dilute it with food and non-food additives. Especially popular among them are starch and flour, which contain amylose polysaccharides. Upon contact with iodine, they form blue clathrates. That is why this medicinal product is preferred as a test indicator.

How to test honey with iodine

If you do not have your own apiary and you go to the market or to the store for honey, then you definitely need to arm yourself with the following knowledge:

Important! High-quality natural honey must comply with the national standard DSTU 4497:2005, which includes only fine particles of dead bees, their larvae, honeycombs, pollen, plant fibers, ash and dust from third-party impurities. In the presence of other impurities, the product is rejected..

Video: how to check honey with iodine

What you need

To conduct this elementary experiment, you need to prepare:

• honey, the authenticity of which we will check;
• glass cup;
• distilled water;
• vinegar.

Checking honey

When this set is assembled, you can proceed to direct verification.

It is carried out as follows:

1. Warm up the water to 25-30°C.
2. Fill a glass with it.
3. Add a tablespoon of bee product and stir until completely dissolved. It is important that there are no lumps or clots in the container.
4. Drop 2-3 drops of iodine into the vessel. Watch what's happening. The outcome of this experiment may be the appearance of a slightly blue color in the honey liquid or specific stains. These are clear signs of previously added starch or flour, which were used to increase the weight of the product or mask its spoilage.
5. Finally, put a few drops of table vinegar into the glass. The hissing and foaming of the liquid will confirm the guesswork about chemical impurities. In this case, we are talking about the presence of chalk, soda, gypsum, lime.

Important! When buying honey, never be tempted by its cheapness. Keep in mind that the process of making this delicacy involves a long cycle and certain costs. Therefore, a priori, such a product cannot be cheap.

Take into account that polysaccharides have a complex molecular structure. Often its terms can be separated from each other. Therefore, the reaction with iodine does not always occur. Often this happens when honey diluted with starch or flour is subjected to pasteurization.
Heat treatment for some time gives the surrogate naturalness and uniform consistency, and also prolongs its shelf life. After its expiration, this fake is most likely to ferment. It should be understood that there will be no benefit from such honey, since even that small amount of useful substances obtained from a natural product is destroyed in its composition when heated.

How to check honey without iodine: evaluate the appearance

Once in the mall, it is unlikely that you will begin to conduct experiments on the authenticity of the goods with the participation of iodine. Therefore, it will be a good habit to check the product certificate. From these documents you can find out about the quality, variety, timing of collection and the geography of origin of the delicacy. Also scrupulously examine it by external signs and do not refuse the sample.

Did you know? According to legend, the aged Democritus decided to arbitrarily die, denying himself food. To postpone his death for the holidays, he ordered to put a bowl filled with honey in front of him. Inhaling this aroma, the ancient Greek sage was able to live up to 107 years without water and food.

Video: how to check the quality of honey at home

Here are the main characteristics of a bee product that you should check before buying:

Smell

Natural honey has a pronounced fragrant aroma. It can be weak or strong, but always pleasant, gentle and without third-party impurities.

Color

Before going to the market or to the store, you should find out what varieties of real honey are and their color shades. For example, buckwheat is brown, flower is golden yellow, lime is amber, and mustard is creamy yellow. The unnatural whiteness of the product should alert, which indicates sugar syrup in the bee diet. You should not expect a healing effect from such a product. Moreover, it is dangerous for people with high blood sugar levels.
According to the requirements of DSTU 4497:2005, natural honey can be colorless, light yellow, yellow or dark yellow and dark with different shades. You can test it for the content of sugar syrup and an increased level of humidity outside the house using a special chemical pencil. For the experiment, you need to drop a sticky substance on your hand and draw a line on the drop. When a blue-violet color appears, the purchase should be abandoned. Please note that sellers who are aware of this verification method do not allow such tests.

Did you know? In Ukraine, honey production annually reaches 70 thousand tons, which allowed the country to top the list of European producers and take 3rd place in the world. China is the world leader.

Transparency

The genuine product is characterized by transparency until crystallization. If in the summer you are offered to buy crystallized honey, look for a viscous liquid substance, since in this case you are faced with last year's product. Please note that a real bee product forms crystals already at a temperature of 30 ° C, which is not enough for a surrogate.
Be sure to try to rub a drop of goodies with your fingers when buying. In the case of a fake, this can not be done without specific pellets. Such lumps indicate an increased level of moisture. It can also be detected by dropping onto a piece of paper. Then the honey drop will be surrounded by a wet ring.

Consistency

The naturalness of honey is measured by its viscosity. It can be liquid, medium or very dense, depending on the maturity of the product. In any case, when you scoop up a fresh bee product with a spoon, it should not spread to the sides like water. A sign of quality is the formation of a “church” on the surface, which gradually levels off. Each variety has its own texture.

Experts in this regard distinguish 5 groups:

• very liquid - clover and acacia honey;
• liquid - linden, rapeseed, buckwheat;
• thick - sainfoin, dandelion;
• sticky - honeydew;
• gelatinous - heather.

Important! The slower the honey flows in the jar, the less water it contains. This is a sign that he will not ferment. Also make sure that there is no white foam on the surface of the product, and light streaks in the depth.

To verify the authenticity of the purchased product right on the spot, take a plastic bottle of drinking water with you and add the honey variety you like inside. If after stirring you get a homogeneous liquid without sediment and lumps, honey is worth buying.
In the event that the seller tells you about an unusual fashionable variety that is guaranteed to save your family from all ailments, do not rush to buy. First, find out if it is possible in a given area to take bribes from such plants and whether they exist in nature at all. Experts advise buying honey directly from familiar beekeepers. Therefore, if you do not have such acquaintances yet, it is worth acquiring them. Happy shopping and stay healthy!

Greetings to all honey lovers.
Everyone who buys bee honey at a market or a honey fair from a beekeeper wants to be sold natural honey, real. In this article, we will look at how to check the quality of honey at home for naturalness in various ways: with matches, with water and iodine, vinegar, milk and an indelible pencil.

Some signs of low-quality honey.

How to identify a fake when buying, what to look for and what you need to remember in order to buy real natural honey. How to choose real and not fake honey?

• Honey has an amber luster and crystal transparency (it was heated, and it has already lost its beneficial properties).
• When poured into a container, honey foams (most likely, it is not ripe).
• The aroma is not felt and the honey is unnaturally white (most likely, honey with an admixture of sugar).
• If the container from which the honey is collected is plastic, copper or galvanized (in this case, the honey will not be stored for a long time and there are toxic impurities in it).
• Liquid on top, and thick below (the so-called bundle). And also if the honey is liquid in late autumn, winter, spring (not candied). An exception is May honey.
• When sampled, honey has a bitter, sour or caramel taste, undissolved grains will remain in the mouth (it should tear the throat slightly).
• Rub between your fingers, if grains remain between them, and the skin is sticky - fake honey (in real honey, the crystals will dissolve and the honey will be completely absorbed into the skin).
• Scoop it up with a spoon and pour it back, the fake will drip from the spoon, forming splashes (should descend in a continuous thread and “stack” in layers, and the last drop will pull back to the spoon).
• When weighed, a liter of honey weighs less than 1.4 kg (most likely, it is immature or fake).

How honey is faked.

In order to gain profit, dishonest producers use such methods to hide the authenticity of honey:

• The bees are fed sugar syrup. In honey obtained in this way, there are little useful substances.
• Dilute honey with sugar syrup and molasses, with the addition of citric acid.
• Evaporate the juices of watermelon, melon, grapes. It turns out a viscous mass.
• For density, flour, starch, chalk, sand and even sawdust are added.

How to check honey for naturalness.

How to check honey at home if you were given it as a gift, or if you bought it in a hurry, and then began to doubt its authenticity?

First of all, we pay attention to the smell and taste. Natural honey conveys the aroma of the plant from which the nectar is collected.

After tasting it, honey literally melts in your mouth, has a pleasant rich taste, no solid particles should be felt. When swallowed, it feels like honey is slightly bitter. This is confirmation that the product is natural.

If this is not enough for you, then let's take a closer look at how to check if honey is real and if there is sugar in honey.

How to check honey with iodine and water for the presence of starch and flour?

Make a solution of honey with water, if the honey is natural, the solution will turn out without sediment. Drop 2-3 drops of iodine into it, it should not turn blue. If there is an admixture in the form of starch or flour in honey, iodine will react with it and the solution will turn blue. Pure honey does not react to iodine, it will not change color. In such a simple way, you can check honey with iodine.

How to check honey with vinegar for the presence of chalk?

Dilute honey with water, drip 2-3 drops of vinegar essence. If the solution foams, you have a fake. An admixture in the form of chalk was added to the "honey". The vinegar reacts with the chalk and the solution boils.

Checking honey with a piece of paper or napkin.

Apply honey to paper or napkin. If wet spots form around the honey, it is diluted.

Checking honey with a piece of stale bread.

Dip a piece of stale bread in honey. After 8-10 minutes, it should remain the same hard, and not soften.

How to test honey with matches or fire?

Bringing a lit match to the honey, the fire will make the quality honey melt first, and only then hiss.
You can also smear some honey on a piece of paper and set it on fire, nothing will happen to natural honey, it will become liquid, will not burn and will not change color. If during burning there is a smell of burnt sugar, then it is fake, not real honey.

Test with heated stainless steel wire.

Heat a stainless steel wire and dip it in honey. Good honey will stay on the metal and not flow back.

You can test honey for sugar with milk.

Using hot milk, you can check the naturalness of honey for clotting or whether sugar has been added to honey.
Natural honey dissolves in milk, but does not curdle, if it curdles, then honey is a fake, which means it was made using burnt sugar.

This video describes in detail and shows with examples how to check natural honey or not at home and how to cook artificial honey.

Ripe and unripe honey.

The fact is that the concept of natural honey is not always unambiguous. Honey must be necessarily ripe, which means that the water content in it is not more than 20%.

The beekeeper determines this simply. Ripened honey is in sealed cells of honeycombs, and there it must stand for a certain time, that is, to ripen.

If beekeepers pump out frames with incompletely sealed combs, they get unripe honey.
And it seems that honey is natural, but not of high quality, which affects its shelf life and worsens its properties. He might just wander off.

What is honey?

The types of honey depend not so much on which inflorescences of plants or fruit trees the bees collected nectar from, but on the admixture of pollen from these plants in honey.
It is the amount of pollen in honey that directly affects the quality of honey.
The more pollen in the honey, the faster the honey will crystallize, but this does not mean that the honey is not natural.
Therefore, when buying honey, we must first of all pay attention to the consistency, color, viscosity, aroma.

We determine honey by appearance and color.

The shade of honey depends entirely on which plant the nectar is collected from.

Dark varieties of honey include mountain honey from yellow to light brown and buckwheat honey (dark).

The rest of the varieties are lighter in color. For example, clover honey is the lightest or most transparent, and forbs have a golden yellow to yellow-brown hue.

Flower honey is usually light yellow in color, there is little pollen in such honey, it is fragrant, fluid, like any honey it has a calming and antiseptic effect. These include sweet clover, white locust, esparcet, akkuray honey.

Honey of thick consistency, high viscosity, fragrant with a high content of pollen. Such varieties of honey include linden honey (light yellow), sunflower honey (light amber).

Beekeepers feed their bees with sugar syrup in the spring to increase the strength of the colony and this is normal, but if you overdo it, then the honey mostly consists of sugar syrup, and subsequently has a white color.

Such honey has a low viscosity, liquid, has a sweetish taste, without aroma. You can use it for food. The sugar content in such honey will not bring harm, but it does not have the beneficial properties that natural honey has.

Candied honey, what does it mean?

If you bought liquid honey and after a month or two it thickened, then this is not unusual. The thickened honey began to crystallize from the abundance of pollen in it. Crystallized (shrunken) honey becomes natural liquid honey as early as 2–3 months after it has been pumped out. The type of honey depends on the size of the sugar crystals. Crystals can be seen in honey with the naked eye. Crystallized honey does not lose its properties. It is just hard to get it out of the dishes where it is stored.

Turbid honey.

When honey is pumped out, bee pollen gets into it and the honey becomes a little cloudy. Perga is a protein. Bee pollen in the hive is used to feed the larvae. Therefore, perga only improves the nutritional properties of honey.

Fall honey.

A variety of honey is honeydew honey. If the apiary is far from honey plants, then the bees will be forced to collect honeydew honey.

His bees collect:

• from the leaves or stems of plants (sweet, sticky liquid) such as cherries, apricots, pears;
• with the release of insects (aphids, mealybugs, psyllids);
• from honeydew, bees collect sweet juice, which stands out on the leaves of plants;
• from the leaves of needles, fir, roses from secretions that appear under the influence of a sharp change in temperature.

By what features can honeydew honey be distinguished from ordinary flower honey?

Honeydew honey can be distinguished from flower honey by taste, smell or visually. Honeydew honey has a moderate sweetness, the taste is bitter. From the point of view of experts, bitterness is the main difference between honeydew honey and flower honey. Honey collected from coniferous plants has the aroma of these plants and is pleasant to the taste. Honeydew honey has a peculiar color from dark brown to black.
Of the properties, it can be noted that honeydew honey crystallizes more slowly than flower honey, or does not crystallize at all, quickly turns sour, liquid fraction sedimentation is possible.

Unripe honey.

Too liquid honey is an indication that the honey is immature or falsified.
If water is released from the honey, there is a smell, a precipitate in the form of flakes or powder, signs of fermentation are noticeable, such honey is not natural.

How to check honey with a chemical pencil?

This video shows how to test honey with an indelible pencil that reacts to moisture and writes in blue.

If we buy honey for long-term storage, then we need to buy flower varieties of honey, collected by bees in spring and in the first half of summer.

We hope you could find the answer to the question of how to check whether honey is natural or not at home and how to choose real, not fake honey.
All the best!