How to identify natural honey. Self-checking honey for quality with improvised means What determines the quality of honey

To buy a really high-quality bee product, and not a fake, it is important to know how to check honey for naturalness. With equal success, this can be done both in the laboratory and at home. Cunning folk methods include checking with iodine, chemical pencil, water, vinegar, milk and other improvised means.

What is fake

Natural honey is usually mixed with sugar syrup, beet or starch syrup, saccharin, chalk, flour and other impurities.

Attention! Liquid honey sold in winter testifies:
- about the falsification of the product;
- about the intentional removal from the crystallized state by heating, which deprives it of all healing properties.

You should also be wary of candied honey in the summer, as this means that it is last year's.

How to check honey for naturalness

The quality and naturalness of a bee product can be determined in two ways: "by eye" and with the help of special tools. Let's consider the first method in more detail.

Checking honey "by eye"

Taste

Checking honey at home begins with a taste test of the product. The taste of a natural amber dessert is pleasant, tart, giving off a floral or herbal sound. It should melt on the tongue, covering with a tingling, slightly burning aftertaste. It leaves no residue, solid particles or crystals behind. A light shade of caramel gives out warm honey, and sugary sweetness is an admixture of sugar.

By color

Knowing the varieties of honey will help you easily identify a fake. As you know, each type of bee product has its own characteristic shade. For example, the linden variety is distinguished by an amber color, the flower variety is golden yellow, the mustard variety is creamy yellow, and the chestnut variety is dark brown. But all of them, regardless of color, are transparent and pure. Fake honey is a little cloudy and has a sediment.

By smell

The quality of honey is easy to determine by aroma. A natural product smells of floral or herbal notes, while a dessert with an admixture of sugar, starch or flour has no smell - neither pleasant nor pungent.

By density and viscosity

Dip a thin wooden stick into the honey and then slowly pull it out. Real honey will follow her with a long thread. When interrupted, the thread forms a turret on its surface, which is then slowly absorbed by the product. If honey becomes similar to glue and drips from the stick with small splashes, then you have a surrogate.

By consistency

When making demands on the quality of honey, pay attention to its consistency. The natural product of beekeeping is characterized by a thin, viscous, delicate structure. It rubs well between the fingers, melts and is absorbed into the skin, while the fake leaves lumps on the hands, characterized by a rough texture.

We attract improvised means

Attention! Foreign substances are added to honey for three reasons:

to hide signs of damaged goods;
to give it a natural and appetizing look;
to add weight.

However, it is quite easy to bring unscrupulous sellers to clean water. Honey can be checked with iodine, chemical pencil, vinegar, alcohol, paper, hydrochloric acid and other items.

Determine the admixture of molasses

Mix one part of honey with 2 parts of distilled water and add a few drops of ammonia. Shake the mixture. If the solution turns brown and precipitates of the same color, then the product is mixed with starch syrup.
You can determine its presence in another way: dissolve honey in two parts of water and add 2-3 drops of hydrochloric acid and 20-30 g of wine alcohol to the mixture. Turbidity of the solution indicates the presence of molasses.

Detect the presence of flour or starch

Consider how to test honey with iodine for the presence of flour or starch impurities. Dilute the product with distilled water and drop a few drops of ordinary iodine into the solution. The blueness of the composition is a clear sign that flour or starch is mixed into the amber dessert.

Attention! The darker the color, the more starch is contained in the bee product.

Checking for chalk

Dissolve honey in water and add a few drops of acetic acid (essence) to the mixture. If the solution boils, emitting a characteristic hiss and releasing carbon dioxide bubbles, your dessert is “stuffed” with chalk.

"Unmasking" Sugar

In connection with the increasing cases of falsification of the bee product, many people are interested in the question: how to check honey for sugar? You can do this in several ways:

The sugar product betrays with its head its suspiciously white color, taste reminiscent of sweet water, lack of astringency, and a slight smell.
Add it to hot milk, and if it curdles, you have a fake mixed with burnt sugar.
In a cup of weak tea, dissolve 1 teaspoon of honey, and then inspect the liquid. Sediment at the bottom of the cup is a sign that the quality of honey leaves much to be desired.
Dip the bread crumb into the dessert and leave it in it for 10 minutes. Then take it out and inspect. Softened bread indicates the presence of sugar syrup, hardened bread indicates a quality product.
On a piece of paper (newsprint or toilet paper), which absorbs moisture well, put a little amber dessert. If it “smeares” on paper, leaving wet marks, or seeps through it, you bought a surrogate with an admixture of sugar syrup or water.

How to test honey with a chemical pencil

An indelible pencil is an effective tool that you should definitely take with you to the beekeeping market or fair. Its peculiarity is that it changes color when it comes into contact with moisture. Before buying honey, immerse the instrument in it. If it changes color, it means that they are trying to sell you a product diluted with water under the brand name of natural. Checking honey with a chemical pencil is also carried out in order to identify impurities in sugar syrup.

The easiest way to check quality

Dissolve 1 teaspoon of honey in a glass of warm water and leave the composition for 1 hour. The sediment formed at the bottom of the glass or flakes that have floated to the surface indicate the unnaturalness of the bee product.
Drop honey on paper and set it on fire. If the product is of high quality, only the paper will burn, and the honey will remain intact - it will not char, burn or darken. The counterfeit will turn brown and melt slightly, leaving the characteristic smell of burnt sugar in the air.

On honey, sometimes there are vivid evidence of its naturalness - particles of pollen or wax, wings of bees. However, this fact cannot be a 100% guarantee. When buying, pay attention to the main indicators of honey quality - color, smell, viscosity and consistency. Subject it to all the listed methods of verification and enjoy the great taste of a natural product.

All materials on the site are presented for informational purposes only. Before using any means, consultation with a doctor is MANDATORY!

The healing properties of honey have been known since ancient times, and since then this bee product has been incredibly popular among the population.

Honey is widely used in the treatment of acute respiratory viral infections, colds, coughs. In addition, the product is very useful for overweight people. In this case, it is recommended to use it with the addition of cinnamon, which will allow you to get rid of extra pounds in a short time.

Traditional medicine has a huge number of recipes based on this unique bee product, however, it must be said that only natural honey has healing properties.

Now, more and more often, unscrupulous businessmen, in pursuit of profit, have begun to engage in falsification of honey delicacy and pass off some incomprehensible substance as a real bee product. So how not to fall for the bait of these unfortunate merchants and buy really real and high-quality honey?

How to check the quality of honey at home?

Many ordinary people are interested in the question: how to check honey for naturalness? Natural product or not can be determined according to several criteria. To begin with, it is recommended to purchase a small amount of the bee product and check it yourself by all means available to you.

How to determine the quality of honey by external criteria?

An ordinary buyer can determine the quality and naturalness of a product by organoleptic indicators: color, smell, taste. When tasting honey, you should pay special attention to the following properties:

When determining the naturalness of a treat, you the following indicators should alert:

Complete absence of smell;
you do not have a feeling of acid and sore throat;
honey has a color uncharacteristic for this variety;
liquid honey mass in the autumn-winter period.

Quality bee product viscous, viscous and dense. The moisture content of natural honey is below 20%, that is, it corresponds to the norm. Take a ladle (or spoon), scoop up a treat, lift it up and look at the falling stream. It should descend in a continuous ribbon, forming a hill on the surface. When transfusing a large volume of honey mass, a characteristic creaking is heard. A treat with a low viscosity does not form a hill, but a small funnel.

If you rotate a spoon with a natural bee product from side to side, you will notice that honey with high humidity does not linger on the tableware and flows down. While a viscous delicacy, on the contrary, wrapped around a spoon.

If the bees were fed with sugar syrup, then it is rather difficult to check whether the honey is real. A fake delicacy has all the features of a natural product and is characterized by low acidity, a high percentage of sucrose, as well as a lower content of macro- and microelements and pollen grains. So how do you tell if honey is natural or fake?

There are the following differences between this product and sugar:

With prolonged storage, the honey mass becomes gelatinous and thick, crystallization is often fat-like;
such a delicacy has a weak aroma, does not cause a burning sensation, does not sour and has a bland sweet taste.

The organoleptic characteristics of a fake honey treat can be quite weak. Unscrupulous beekeepers practice the joint pumping of frames with natural honey and the so-called sugar frames. At the same time, the appearance and taste of the surrogate improves, which makes it difficult to check honey at home. And yet, is it possible to accurately determine the quality of a sweet medicine at home? Of course, yes, you just need to know how to do it.

Some beekeepers add various powdered substances (starch, chalk, flour and even sand) to honey to increase the mass of the bee product and its viscosity. If you are interested in the question of how to determine the quality of honey at home in order to detect insoluble impurities, you can just dissolve the product.

To do this, you need to collect warm water in a transparent container and put 2 tbsp. l. bee product, mix thoroughly. After about an hour, all insoluble impurities (if any) will settle down.

Humidity of honey

Specific gravity of honey mixture determines its quality. The more water is contained in the product, the less dry residue it contains, which means that the specific gravity is also less. So how do you determine yourself?

In fact, everything is very simple. It is necessary to take a transparent container and weigh it. Then put some kind of mark on the surface of the jar and pour water to the specified level. Carry out the weighing again. The resulting difference is the amount of water. Now, in the same jar (wiped dry), pour the honey mass up to the mark and weigh the product. It is necessary to subtract the figure of the first weighing from the result obtained and in the remainder you will get the amount of honey, which should then be divided by the indicator of the amount of water - this is the specific gravity of the honey delicacy.

Humidity up to 20% is considered normal, which corresponds to specific gravity 1.4 kg. If, as a result of the experiment, you got a lower value, then the product contains a large amount of water, which can cause fermentation.

How to check honey for naturalness at home in non-traditional ways?

In addition to the above, there are also so-called non-traditional ways to check the quality and naturalness of the bee product. In the beekeeping literature, nothing is said about such methods, so it is impossible to say with absolute certainty that they are reliable. However, you can try.

Of these here non-traditional methods for determining quality honey products include the following:

How to test honey with additional substances?

The naturalness and quality of honey products can be determined using various substances found in almost every home.

How to check honey - real or not - with iodine?

Some unscrupulous beekeepers add starch and flour to honey to create the appearance of a crystallized product. The quality of this honey can be checked reaction to iodine.

In a small amount of water, it is necessary to dissolve a little bee product and add iodine (5 drops) to it. If the composition turns blue, then the sample contains starch or flour.

Testing with ammonia

Sometimes, in order to increase the viscosity, beekeepers add starch syrup to honey. It can be detected by the residues of sulfuric acid used in the process of saccharification of starch. How, then, to determine the quality of honey products?

Here ammonia will come to the aid of the layman.

Dissolve honey (1 part) in water (2 parts);
take 2 ml of solution and add ammonia (8 drops) there.

If the mixture contains starch, it will turn brown, and a brown precipitate containing ammonium sulphate will appear at the bottom.

How to determine the presence of chalk in a product using vinegar?

Some so-called beekeepers add to the product powdered chalk. This is done in order to increase the weight and density of the honey delicacy. Such a mixture can cause serious harm to health.

The presence of chalk in the honey mass can be determined using vinegar essence. A few drops of acid are added to the test sample. If a sizzling reaction occurs with the release of moisture, then the delicacy contains chalk additives.

How to check the authenticity of honey using lapis?

There is also such a method of falsifying a bee product as adding sugar syrup. To detect a fake, you can use a solution of silver nitrate (lapis).

Dissolve honey (1 tablespoon) in ten tablespoons of water and add lapis. If the honey mixture contains sugar, a precipitate of silver chloride, white in color, will fall to the bottom. There will be no sediment in a quality product.

Checking with a chemical pencil

You can check the naturalness of the honey product and with chemical pencil. To do this, put a small amount of honey on a piece of paper and draw a line. If a colored trace remains, then the product may contain various impurities or sugar syrup. In the same way, you can try to determine the moisture content of a honey treat.

However, this method of determining the quality of honey raises some doubts. In 1972, V. G. Chudakov made a simple experiment. He subjected to research 36 varieties of bee products, 13 of which were falsifications. Pencil testing showed identical results on all 36 samples. From this we can conclude that the chemical pencil does not contribute to the identification of a fake.

There are many more ways to check honey for quality. However, they are more difficult to use and cannot be done at home. If you have researched a sweet delicacy using the above methods and made sure that you have real high-quality honey, you can safely go to the same store and purchase the right amount of delicious medicine.

Attention, only TODAY!

Only the beekeepers themselves know how natural and environmentally friendly honey from their apiary is, but any consumer can make a certain analysis. Before buying a large quantity of this valuable product, it is advisable to purchase a small jar from the same batch and do some simple research.

At home, so as not to run into a fake?

What kind of honey is counterfeit?

The history of fake honey began a long time ago, the first mention of its falsification dates back to 1855. Since then, the techniques of fraudsters have improved so much that sometimes it is possible to reliably determine its quality only in laboratories.

What honey is adulterated:

immature;
heated (melted);
honey with additives and impurities.

Most often, sugar honey and artificially inverted sugar are mixed into a natural product, less often starch and beet molasses.

How to determine the quality of honey at home

Let's check maturity first. Some beekeepers, unknowingly or out of selfish motives, seek to start pumping honey as early as possible in order to sell it for the greatest profit.

What's wrong with raw honey? It will hold more than 20% of moisture, it quickly loses its medicinal properties, is stored worse, and often begins to ferment. In the process of fermentation, such a product is formed and becomes unusable.

How to determine the quality of honey? Maturity is defined in many ways. The first one is the viscosity test.

At a temperature of 20 0 C, you need to take a spoon with honey, place it horizontally, and start rotating. Mature honey does not have time to drain, but is wound on a spoon. If you lower the end of the cutlery down, honey flows from it very slowly, and leaves a tubercle on the surface. Unripe honey begins to drain during rotation, and the surface is quickly leveled. At lower temperatures, the viscosity decreases, at high temperatures it increases.

When testing, it is necessary to take into account the variety, since different types of honey have different viscosities:

Very (acacia, orange, clover).
Liquid lime).
Gelatinous (heather).
Dense (sunflower, rapeseed, buckwheat).

The second way is to check the ratio of volume and weight. Weight (net) of one liter of mature honey must be at least 1.4 kg.

Third: bubbles. If the honey has a sour smell, an alcohol taste, or bubbles slowly form on the surface, the honey has fermented.

Fourth test: paper. A drop of honey is applied to a newspaper sheet. If the honey is mature, it will remain on the surface. If damp, it will spread, leaving a wet mark.

The fifth method is suitable when the honey has already been candied. If it breaks up into two layers of different density, it contains a large percentage of water.

Let's bring impurities to clean water!

To increase the volume and give the product a questionable quality like natural mature honey, various additives can be added to it. How to determine the quality of honey? At home, it is quite possible to determine its purity.

1. The presence of impurities is easily detected: a small amount of honey is diluted in distilled water. A quality product will completely dissolve. If there are foreign inclusions, they will either precipitate or settle to the bottom.

2. Chalk can be detected by adding acetic acid to an aqueous solution of honey. If the mixture starts to sizzle and foam, there is chalk in the honey.

3. To increase the viscosity, starch and flour can be added to honey. In this case, there is nothing easier than to determine the quality of honey with iodine. Honey must be dissolved in water, and then drop iodine there. If the solution turns blue, it means that starch has been added to the delicacy.

4. Gelatin is detected by adding a 5% solution of tannin to a mixture of honey and water. If present, white flakes will appear.

5. Molasses in honey will show ammonia. A few drops of alcohol added to an aqueous solution of counterfeit will turn it brown.

Definition of baked honey

Often sellers try to sell crystallized old honey under the guise of a new harvest.

How to determine the quality of honey at home if it has been candied and melted? Signs of a fake:

Heated honey is transparent and homogeneous, while the natural product is slightly cloudy due to the presence of protein compounds.
The product has a slight aroma, caramel flavor, and it noticeably
When the temperature drops to +5 0 C, vitreous threads form in it. Natural honey behaves this way only in severe frost.

sugar honey

Such honey has a white color and a very weak aroma (it should be noted that some types of honey, say, sunflower, also almost do not smell).

The taste does not have the characteristic astringency and light perspiration. If you smear a drop on paper and set it on fire, the smell of burnt sugar will appear. In hot milk, such "honey" is curtailed.

Finally

When buying, trust your feelings. Honey should be sweet, slightly tart and fragrant. From him a little and he is very pleasant to the taste. The aroma should be natural, floral. Crystallization is a normal process for a 3-4 month old product and older. Frozen honey in winter should inspire more confidence than liquid and transparent.

Greetings to everyone in my beekeeper's electronic diary!

Yesterday a friend called me and asked me to consult about honey. He was going to visit relatives in Kazakhstan and wanted to bring local honey to his grandmother.

Walking through the shelves, I bought a couple of jars for testing from different manufacturers, as a result, one honey turned out to be sour, the other began to hurt my stomach.

I explained to him for a long time how to choose a good product, and then I thought that it would be better to write down all these recommendations so that I could take a printout with me. Look for helpful tips below.

A few tricks when choosing honey

Liquid honey happens only within a month after the honey collection, which lasts from the end of July to the end of September. By the end of October, all collected honey begins to crystallize and thicken, except for honey from acacia and heather. Therefore, if you are offered liquid honey on the market in winter, most likely it has been melted or diluted with glucose syrup. Remember that when honey is heated to 40 degrees and above, it loses all its valuable properties and turns into ordinary sweet syrup.
To check the naturalness of liquid honey, dip a spoon into it and lift it up - high-quality honey will slowly flow down a long thread, and if it breaks, then a slide will form on the surface of the honey, which will slowly spread. Fake honey quickly pours from a spoon or scatters with splashes. You can wind honey on a spoon - if it lays down in even folds, it means that this is not a fake in front of you.
Be sure to smell the honey and taste it - it should have a fragrant smell and a characteristic taste that cannot be compared with anything else. The absence of aroma indicates the artificial origin of honey, and the caramel flavor indicates that the honey was exposed to high temperatures.
The color of honey is not an indicator of its quality, so white honey does not mean sugary, and dark brown color does not indicate the presence of molasses or sugar syrup in honey. Sweet clover, acacia and fireweed honey have light shades, buckwheat, cherry and honeydew honey are dark brown, and other varieties can be light yellow, amber and dark amber.

There are ways to more detailed check the quality of honey at home. Some housewives dissolve honey in water and drip lugol or iodine - a blue solution indicates that starch or flour has been added to the product. More inquisitive experts arrange a real chemical laboratory in the kitchen, but this can be avoided if you take honey from a familiar trusted beekeeper who keeps bees in an ecologically clean area.

Source: www.edimdoma.ru

How to choose natural honey in the market

And the problem of how to choose real honey on the market is faced by many, especially city dwellers, is acute. It's no joke - both shops and markets are filled with fakes of the most varying severity, and in some places the sellers are so convincing and professional in their fakes that it is almost impossible to get away from them without buying.

So, instead of a truly natural product, some business beekeepers sell one that is made by bees, but not from nectar or honeydew, but from simple sugar syrup, with which the beekeepers themselves diligently feed their pets. Often sold honey is two or three years old, melted and poured many times. No one, of course, admits to its antiquity.

And the most severe fakes are vegetable syrups, with the help of additives disguised as a natural product. Such surrogates are most often prepared by evaporating melon or watermelon juices. Passing them off as natural honey is the most difficult thing, but sometimes scammers do it. In order not to be deceived and choose real high-quality honey, you should know the main features of a natural product.

How to distinguish good honey from fakes

Taste.
It should be somewhat astringent and sugary. How to choose natural honey to taste? It has a pronounced specificity. Linden is somewhat more tender, sunflower or buckwheat - especially bright and clear. Fake or honey collected from sugar syrup tastes like banal sugar syrup. As a rule, they do not cause a slight burning sensation on the tongue, characteristic of a natural product.
By smell.
Likewise with smell. How to choose high-quality honey on the market? Smell it! Any natural product has a specific aroma, even when thickened. And sugar syrups almost do not smell.
General consistency.
It is easiest to identify by rubbing a drop of sweet treat between your fingers. How to choose natural honey? It will spread easily and be absorbed into the skin. Fake most often forms clots and lumps that are easily felt by the fingers.

Very often, when choosing honey on the market or from hands, it is possible to evaluate its consistency by dipping a stick or spoon into it. The “correct” honey, when poured from a spoon, will form a thin thread, and on the surface of the main mass it will accumulate in the form of a pagoda, which will gradually spread. A fake, as a rule, drips from a spoon and immediately falls into the main volume.
By color.
How to choose honey by color? This sign is the most difficult. So, some varieties of honey can be very easily confused with "sugar" because of their lightness. However, honey made from sugar usually gives the impression of being too white. In addition, natural honey is always quite homogeneous and transparent, while fakes usually have turbidity and a small sediment at the bottom.

But even knowing how to choose natural honey according to these characteristics, it is better not to rush and take the selected samples in the smallest quantities - a mayonnaise jar, for example. And already at home to conjure them. For example, there are good methods for assessing the presence of certain additives in the composition of honey.

What is added to honey

Starch.
It is calculated by the usual school experience: a few drops of iodine are dripped into a jar. In the presence of starch, the smudge on the surface of the honey will turn blue.
Sugar.
It is even easier to check: a piece of bread is dipped into honey and held for ten minutes. After that it is taken out. If the bread has hardened, then the honey is good. If it's soft, it means there's a lot of sugar syrup in it.
Water.
Water will definitely show itself if you drop honey on a piece of paper. A good product will remain a drop on paper, and diluted with water will begin to form liquid spots or even leak.
Chalk.
It is added to the composition of the product most often to give the impression of density and density. To detect it, it is necessary to drop vinegar essence into a spoon with honey. Hissing means bad.

In order to check whether the honey you have chosen is of high quality, you can simply poke it with a red-hot wire. If anything remains on it after taking it out, you have a fake in front of you. Good honey does not stick to hot metal. And only after these manipulations at home help you choose real high-quality honey, you can safely go to the market and buy from an honest seller a full supply for the winter.

By the way, it is important to remember that no natural honey can be stored for several years without thickening. Fortunately, after a few months it begins to crystallize. And if in the middle of winter they sell you a product that is clean, like a baby’s tear, and fluid like a mountain stream, know that something is wrong with it.

Source: sostavproduktov.ru

Distinctive properties and features of natural honey

Consistency is the first sign of real honey. First of all, it should be homogeneous, at the bottom of the jar of honey there should be no sediment, no delaminations. Also, depending on the time of year, ambient temperature, this indicator is different: young honey has a liquid consistency, and by winter it becomes thicker.

With the onset of cold weather, natural honey, as a rule, crystallizes (“candied”) - it becomes lighter, cloudy and thicker. If this does not happen, then the honey is falsified.

Attention!

An exception to the rule is acacia honey, this type of honey crystallizes more slowly than others.

That is why in winter real honey cannot be liquid, in this case it was either melted (usually beekeepers say “dissolved”) to give it a marketable appearance, or it was obtained as a result of feeding bees with sugar. By the way, in winter, packaged honey on store shelves is usually of a liquid consistency, which should be alarming.

Pay attention to the fluidity of honey (this method is suitable for freshly pumped liquid honey). The quality of young honey can be determined as follows: dip a spoon into a bottle of honey, scoop it up and lift it up. Real honey lasts for a long, long time, flows down in an even stream, does not break into drops, lies on a plate in a slide, and then spreads smoothly over its surface. The last drop of dripping honey springs and pulls back to the spoon.
If you turn the spoon around its axis, then the honey should “wrap” around it like a ribbon. Unripe honey will usually drip off immediately, no matter how fast you spin the spoon.

Try also rubbing a little honey between your fingers. The real one is completely absorbed, while the fake one forms a lump that can be rolled.
Taste. Real honey, in addition to being just sweet, should also be pleasantly bitter, cause a slight sore throat, it should have a tart taste. Hold some honey in your mouth and swallow - the right honey will "twitch" your throat.
Smell and aroma. Real honey smells like flowers, the smell is unobtrusive, natural. Artificial has two extremes: the smell can be completely absent or it can be sharp, unnatural, give off caramel.
The color of honey depends on the honey plants from which the nectar was collected. For example, flower honey comes in light shades, buckwheat - brown, linden - amber. The white color may indicate that the bees were fed sugar syrup. In this case, they ferment sugar and process it like ordinary nectar from the fields. The result is ordinary honey, which is difficult to determine even in the laboratory.

Of course, in terms of its useful properties and taste, it is significantly inferior to natural.

Often unscrupulous sellers already in spring or early summer offer buyers liquid dark-colored honey (supposedly buckwheat). This color can be obtained by melting last year's frozen honey. Such honey is “dead”, because when heated above 40 degrees, it loses all its useful properties.

For the same reason, honey should not be added to hot drinks (tea, milk, cocoa). For cosmetic purposes (during the preparation of homemade masks, scrubs), it is advisable to slightly heat crystallized honey in a water bath at a water temperature of about 40 degrees.

The so-called May honey is very popular among the population. For experienced beekeepers, the word "May" causes an involuntary smile. No, honey could theoretically be harvested in May, but no beekeeper in their right mind would forage sweet flower nectar and pollen from future brood, which they need for growth and development. Pumping out honey in early spring leads to lethargy, weakness of future working bees and a shortage of many tens of kg of honey in the fall during the main collection of bee products.

How to experimentally establish the authenticity of honey at home?

The high demand for honey and other bee products creates fertile ground for scammers. Currently, flour, chalk, sawdust, starch, sucrose, molasses and other fillers are used to create counterfeit.

Some types of fakes are difficult to detect even in the laboratory. For example, feeding bees that bring nectar from the fields with sugar syrup. The color of such honey is usually lighter, almost white, and it also crystallizes more slowly.

Methods for determining the fake honey using chemical reactions:

Dissolve a little honey in a glass of water, then pour the liquid into a transparent container. If the product contains impurities (flour, chalk, starch, sawdust), they will either float to the surface or settle to the bottom.
To detect starch or flour, add a drop of iodine to the honey solution, and the solution should turn blue.
Drop vinegar into the solution. If something hissed - this is a sure sign of the presence of chalk in it.
But using this method, you can detect the presence of sugar or starch syrup in honey. Prepare a 10% honey solution. Add a little medical alcohol to 1/2 of the solution, if it turns white - starch syrup was mixed into the honey. To detect signs of sugar molasses, you need to add silver nitrate or lapis to the remaining half. If a white precipitate falls out, it means that it is present there.
The presence of impurities can also be determined using blotting paper (blotter paper). We apply a small amount of honey on paper, leave for 3-5 minutes. If during this time the paper does not get wet on the reverse side, then this indicates a high quality of honey.
You can find out if honey is diluted with sugar syrup by immersing a piece of bread in honey for 10 minutes. We look: if the piece is hard, then the honey is normal, and if it has spread or softened a lot, then syrup was probably mixed into it.

Watch a video on how to choose the right honey:

Source: www.maski-natural.ru

Methods for determining the quality of honey

The people have their own methods of how to determine the quality of honey, for example, using a chemical pencil.

The bottom line is this: a layer of honey is applied to paper, a finger or a spoon and a chemical pencil is drawn over it, or a pencil is dipped into the honey itself.

It is assumed that if the honey is falsified, i.e. contains all sorts of impurities (sugar, sugar honey, as well as an increased amount of water), then a colored pencil mark will remain. However, the researcher V. G. Chudakov in 1972 tested 36 samples of honey of different quality, including 13 falsified ones, and believes that this folk method for determining the naturalness of honey and assessing its quality is absolutely wrong.

Again, V. G. Chudakov conducted laboratory studies of this sample, which led to the conclusion that the sample actually allows you to determine almost 100% of counterfeit honey, but besides, some natural honeys also fall into the category of counterfeit.

Advice!

If you buy honey, then look in the reference books for how it should look. The main thing is that it must have a certain aroma, honey taste, that is, a bouquet corresponding to a certain variety of natural honey must also match the color.

If the honey is too white, this should raise the suspicion that it is sugar? If the color is dark brown, is it not honeydew? If its aroma is blunted, the taste of caramel is felt - it means that it is melted honey.

Also pay attention to the consistency of honey - it should correspond to the density of the variety, at a temperature of 20 degrees Celsius it should be wound on a spoon, like a ribbon, with sweet threads that break at a certain moment.

Liquid honey should arouse suspicion. Most likely, this is unripe honey. It will not be stored, it will ferment, as it contains a lot of water. Such honey will not “wrap” on a spoon, but will simply drain from it. If you buy honey in winter, it should not be runny, and if it is, it has most likely been warmed up or diluted.

When buying, check the honey for fermentation. When stirring, it should not be felt that it is not viscous, actively foaming, gas bubbles appear on the surface, that a specific sour smell comes from it, and there is also an alcohol or burnt taste.

Before buying a large amount of honey, buy 100-200 grams for a sample.

Beware of purchasing honey from apiaries located along highways with heavy traffic. In such honey, there may be an increased amount of lead compounds and other substances that fall on flowers with car exhaust. With nectar and pollen, lead gets into honey, and this is dangerous for the health of those who consume it.

Honey collected in areas with unfavorable ecology is very harmful.

How to identify impurities in honey?

To determine various impurities in honey, the following methods are recommended. Pour water into a transparent jar, add one teaspoon of honey, stir - the honey will dissolve, an impurity will settle at the bottom.

In order to detect an admixture of flour or starch in honey, you need to pour 3-5 ml of an aqueous solution of honey (1: 2) into a jar or glass and add 3-5 drops of Lugol's solution (or tincture of iodine). If honey contains flour or starch, the solution will turn blue.

If there is starch syrup in honey, then the solution will take on a milky color. After settling this solution, a transparent semi-liquid sticky mass (dextrin) will settle. If the impurity is absent, the solution will remain transparent.

There is another way: to 5 ml of a 20% solution of honey in distilled water, add 22.5 ml of methyl (wood) alcohol, with the formation of an abundant yellowish-white precipitate, it will become clear that honey contains sugar syrup.

To detect an admixture of inverted sugar (grated honey), there is a rather complicated method: grind 5 g of honey with a small amount of ether (in which fructose breakdown products dissolve), then filter the ether solution into a bowl, evaporate to dryness and add 2-3 drops of freshly prepared 1 % solution of resorcinol in concentrated hydrochloric acid (sp. weight 1.125 g).

If the impurity turns orange (to cherry red), then there is invert sugar.

An increased percentage of sucrose in honey, which can be established in the laboratory, indicates its poor quality: in natural flower honey, sucrose is not more than 5%, not more than 10% in honeydew. The better the quality of natural honey, the less sucrose it contains. "Sugar" honey has its own organoleptic characteristics: the smell of old honeycombs, insipid inexpressive taste, liquid consistency (if it is fresh), during long-term storage it becomes thick, sticky, sticky.

"Sugar" honey (the bees were fed or fed with sugar), like all non-natural honey, is distinguished by the absence of vitamins, organic acids, protein and aromatic substances, and mineral salts. In sugar honey, silicon is the main element, and other salts are practically absent, there are only traces of them. In natural honey, the opposite is true.

If the honey does not crystallize, then it can be assumed that there is an admixture of potato molasses.

Advice!

In order to detect an admixture of honeydew honey, pour 1 part of an aqueous solution of honey (1: 1) into a glass and add 2 parts of lime water, then heat the mixture to a boil. If brown flakes are formed that precipitate, then this indicates the presence of an admixture of honeydew honey.

How can you spot a fake?

In a cup of weak warm tea, add a little of what you bought under the guise of honey. If you are not deceived, the tea will darken, but no sediment will form at the bottom. Over time, honey becomes cloudy and thickens (candied) - this is a sure sign of good quality. And not, as many mistakenly believe, that honey has deteriorated.

Sometimes honey is divided into two layers during storage: it thickens only from below, and remains liquid from above. This suggests that it is immature and therefore should be eaten as quickly as possible - unripe honey only lasts for a few months.

Attention!

Careless beekeepers do not take out bees to collect nectar, but simply feed them sugar. Sugar honey is not natural. There is nothing useful in it. Such "sugar" honey is unnaturally white.

In real honey, there is no free water - in mature honey, water (about 20% of it) is completely bound in a true saturated solution. Honey with sugar syrup has a high moisture content, this can be checked in the following way: dip a piece of bread into the honey, and remove it after 8-10 minutes. Bread will harden in high-quality honey. If, on the contrary, it softened or completely spread, then in front of you is nothing more than sugar syrup.

Tricks of honey sellers designed for gullible buyers

First, plug your ears and don't listen to what they tell you. Check everything yourself. Of course, one honest seller can fall for a bunch of liars, but how do you know that the one who is standing in front of you is honest? Try honey not only from above, but also from the bottom of the jar. Feel free to put your spoon in the jar and don't listen to the salespeople who start yelling, "Don't ruin the product!"

Unheated honey - both fresh transparent and candied - is an effective antiseptic, and a clean spoon in a jar cannot spoil it. Another thing is if there was not honey at the bottom, or this honey was previously heated, which led to the loss of its antiseptic and all other healing properties.

Crystallization (saccharification) is a natural process for honey, which does not affect its quality and composition of nutrients. Don't let crystallized honey fool you. Do not come the next day to the seller who promised you uncrystallized honey. They will bring the same, but warmed up. And in no case should you heat honey, because. this turns it into a simple sweet substance, devoid of so many useful properties!

Methods for determining the quality of honey

Many people ask: "Where to make an examination of honey in St. Petersburg?"

I answer: "In the State Budgetary Institution of the St. Petersburg City Veterinary Laboratory at the address: Rizhskaya St., 6, lit. A

Test center phone: 444-57-11

The people have their own methods of how to determine the quality of honey, for example, using a chemical pencil. The bottom line is this: a layer of honey is applied to paper, a finger or a spoon and a chemical pencil is drawn over it, or a pencil is dipped into the honey itself. It is assumed that if the honey is falsified, i.e. contains all sorts of impurities (sugar, sugar honey, as well as an increased amount of water), then a colored pencil mark will remain. However, the researcher V. G. Chudakov in 1972 tested 36 samples of honey of different quality, including 13 falsified ones, and believes that this folk method for determining the naturalness of honey and assessing its quality is absolutely wrong.

There is another folk method to determine the falsification of honey, it consists in a test on blotting paper. A small amount of honey is placed on blotting paper. If after a few minutes a watery spot appears on the back of the paper, this is considered a sign of falsification. Again, V. G. Chudakov conducted laboratory studies of this sample, which led to the conclusion that the sample actually allows you to determine almost 100% of counterfeit honey, but besides, some natural honeys also fall into the category of counterfeit.

If the honey is too white, this should raise the suspicion that it is sugar? If the color is dark brown - is it not honeydew? If its aroma is blunted, the taste of caramel is felt - it means that it is melted honey.

Liquid honey should arouse suspicion. Most likely, this is unripe honey. It will not be stored, it will ferment, as it contains a lot of water. Such honey will not "wrap" on a spoon, but will simply drain from it. If you buy honey in winter, it should not be runny, and if it is, it has most likely been warmed up or diluted.

Before buying a large amount of honey, buy 100-200 grams for a sample.

Honey collected in areas with unfavorable ecology is very harmful.

How to identify impurities in honey?

An admixture of molasses (a mixture of cool water and starchy sugar) can be recognized by its appearance, stickiness, and lack of crystallization. You can also mix one part of honey with 2-3 parts of distilled water, add a quarter of the volume of 96% alcohol and shake. If there is starch syrup in honey, then the solution will take on a milky color. After settling this solution, a transparent semi-liquid sticky mass (dextrin) will settle. If the impurity is absent, the solution will remain transparent.

You can detect impurities of sugar (beet) molasses and ordinary sugar by adding a solution of silver nitrate (lapis) to a 5-10% solution of honey in water. If a white precipitate of silver chloride falls out, then this indicates the presence of an impurity. If there is no sediment, then the honey is pure. There is another way: to 5 ml of a 20% solution of honey in distilled water, add 22.5 ml of methyl (wood) alcohol, with the formation of an abundant yellowish-white precipitate, it will become clear that honey contains sugar syrup.

An increased percentage of sucrose in honey, which can be established in the laboratory, indicates its poor quality: in natural flower honey, sucrose is not more than 5%, not more than 10% - in honeydew. The better the quality of natural honey, the less sucrose it contains. "Sugar" honey has its own organoleptic characteristics: the smell of old honeycombs, insipid inexpressive taste, liquid consistency (if it is fresh), during long-term storage it becomes thick, sticky, sticky.

"Sugar" honey (the bees were fed or fed with sugar), like all non-natural honey, is distinguished by the absence of vitamins, organic acids, protein and aromatic substances, mineral salts. In sugar honey, silicon is the main element, and other salts are practically absent, there are only traces of them. In natural honey - on the contrary.

If the honey does not crystallize, then it can be assumed that there is an admixture of potato molasses.

A SET OF EXPRESS CHECKS OF HONEY FOR QUALITY AT PURCHASE

(Some points will repeat the above, but repetition is the mother of learning, because any reasonable adult is simply obliged not to allow himself to be fooled by any crooked crooks and in all cases be able to choose normal quality products)

Can I buy honey from my hands? Only if you are sure what you are buying. Selling honey in a store is also not a guarantee of its quality.

The only true guarantee of the quality of the purchased honey is a personal acquaintance with the beekeeper, confidence in his integrity and the knowledge that his apiary is located in a safe area. Therefore, it is best to buy honey from a familiar beekeeper right in his apiary.

The most common fake honey is sugar syrup. The same syrup is often diluted with unripe honey to give it the missing sweetness.

First, the honey must be mature. After all, bees work on nectar for about a week: they evaporate water, enrich it with enzymes, break down complex sugars into simple ones. During this time, honey is infused. The bees seal the finished product with wax caps, it is this honey that has all its useful properties and can be stored for a long time.

Very often, beekeepers pump out honey during the honey flow, without waiting for it to ripen, due to a lack of combs. The water content in such honey is sometimes twice the norm, it is not enriched with enzymes and sucrose, and quickly turns sour.

To determine the maturity of fresh unsweetened honey, its temperature is adjusted to 20 g. C, stirring with a spoon. Then the spoon is taken out and rotated. Ripe honey wraps around her. From time to time, honey can become sugary, this is normal, and does not affect either the taste, or the aroma, or the healing qualities of honey.

With the help of simple tests, you can determine if honey is adulterated:
- Flour and starch are determined by adding a drop of iodine to a small amount of honey diluted with water. If the solution turns blue, honey with flour or starch.
- If the solution sizzles when adding vinegar essence, there is chalk in honey.
- If in a 5-10% aqueous solution of honey, when a small amount of lapis solution is added, turbidity forms around the drops and a white precipitate forms, sugar has been added.

How can you determine the quality of honey?

1) By color.

Each type of honey has its own unique color. Flower honey - light yellow, linden - amber, ash - transparent, like water, buckwheat has different shades of brown. Pure honey without impurities, as a rule, is transparent, no matter what color it is.
Honey, which has additives in its composition (sugar, starch, other impurities), is cloudy, and if you look closely, you can find sediment in it.

2) By flavor.

Real honey has a fragrant aroma. This scent is incomparable. Honey with an admixture of sugar has no aroma, and its taste is close to the taste of sweetened water.

3) By viscosity.

Take a sample of honey by dropping a thin stick into the container. If it is real honey, then it follows the stick with a long continuous thread, and when this thread breaks, it will completely fall, forming a turret, a pagoda on the surface of the honey, which then slowly disperses.
Fake honey, on the other hand, will behave like glue: it will profusely drain and drip down from the stick, forming splashes.

4) By consistency.

In real honey, it is thin, tender. Honey is easily rubbed between the fingers and absorbed into the skin, which cannot be said about a fake. Fake honey has a rough texture, and lumps remain on the fingers when rubbed.
Before buying honey in the market in reserve, take the product you like from 2-3 regular sellers. To start with 100 grams. Do the recommended quality tests at home and only then buy it for future use from the same sellers.

5) Check if water and sugar are added to honey.

To do this, drop honey on a piece of low-grade unglued paper (for example, ordinary newsprint or toilet paper), which absorbs moisture well. If it spreads over the paper, forming wet spots, or even seeps through it, it is fake honey.

6) Determine if there is starch in honey.

To do this, put a little honey in a glass, pour boiling water over it, stir and cool. After that, drop a few drops of iodine there. If the composition turns blue, it means that starch has been added to the honey. This is fake honey.

7) Find out if there are other impurities in honey.

To do this, take a red-hot stainless steel wire (you can heat it in the flame of a lighter) and lower it into honey. If a sticky foreign mass hangs on it, this is a fake for honey, but if the wire remains clean, honey is natural or, in other words, full-fledged.

8) What should I pay attention to when buying honey?

Honey, incl. and when sold, it cannot be stored in metal containers, since the acids contained in its composition can give oxidation. This will lead to an increase in the content of heavy metals in it and to a decrease in useful substances. Such honey can cause discomfort in the stomach and even lead to poisoning.

Conscientious sellers store honey only in glass, earthenware, porcelain, ceramic and wooden utensils. If you see that honey is being sold from metal containers, immediately step aside.

9) How else can you distinguish a fake?

In a cup of weak warm tea, add a little of what you bought under the guise of honey. If you are not deceived, the tea will darken, but no sediment will form at the bottom.
Over time, honey becomes cloudy and thickens (candied) - this is a sure sign of good quality. And not, as many mistakenly believe, that honey has deteriorated.
Sometimes honey is divided into two layers during storage: it thickens only from below, and remains liquid from above. This suggests that it is immature and therefore should be eaten as quickly as possible - unripe honey only lasts a few months.
Careless beekeepers do not take out bees to collect nectar, but simply feed them sugar. Sugar honey is not natural. There is nothing useful in it. Such "sugar" honey is unnaturally white.
In real honey, there is no free water - in mature honey, water (about 20% of it) is completely bound in a true saturated solution. Honey with sugar syrup has a high moisture content, this can be checked in the following way: dip a piece of bread into the honey, and remove it after 8-10 minutes. Bread will harden in high-quality honey. If, on the contrary, it softened or completely spread, then in front of you is nothing more than sugar syrup.
But no one on the market will allow you to conduct such experiments, but they will give you a try. Often honey is dripped onto a small piece of paper for tasting. This is quite enough to conduct another experiment. When going to the market for honey, take a chemical pencil with you. Smear honey on a paper with a pencil, you can smear it with your finger, and try to write something on the “honey” strip with an indelible pencil. If after a few seconds an inscription or blue stains appear, you can confidently and loudly inform the seller (so that other buyers can hear) that starch or flour is present in the product. If there is no chemical pencil, a drop of iodine will do. The same blue hue of the proposed honey will unmistakably determine the starch and flour in the product.

10) What kind of honey is better - mountain or, let's say, plain?

Do not fall for the bait when they try to convince you that mountain honey is better than the one that bees collect in our open spaces. Mountain honey has no special advantages over “plain” honey. The quality of honey and the concentration of useful substances in it depends only on the decency and knowledge of the beekeeper, as well as on the ecological situation in the honey collection area. Here, however, there is a difference between honey collected in a clean environment, and what the bees collected from the beds of an industrial enterprise. But here it all depends on the beekeeper. Conscience should not allow him to earn on "industrial" honey.

11) Honey sellers have several tricks designed for gullible buyers.

First, plug your ears and don't listen to what they tell you. Check everything yourself. Of course, one honest seller can fall for a bunch of liars, but how do you know that the one who is standing in front of you is honest? Try honey not only from above, but also from the bottom of the jar. Feel free to put your spoon in the jar and don't listen to the salespeople who start yelling, "Don't ruin the product!"
Unheated honey - both fresh transparent and candied - is an effective antiseptic, and a clean spoon in a jar cannot spoil it. Another thing is if there was not honey at the bottom, or this honey was previously heated, which led to the loss of its antiseptic and all other healing properties.
Do not buy honey on the market without checking or rolled up. The fact that honey is better stored rolled up with a tin lid is a myth. A simple screw-on or tight polyethylene lid is sufficient.
Crystallization (candied) is a natural process for honey, which does not affect its quality and composition of nutrients. Don't let crystallized honey fool you. Do not come the next day to the seller who promised you uncrystallized honey. They will bring the same, but warmed up. And in no case should you heat honey, because. this turns it into a simple sweet substance, devoid of so many useful properties!

12) Real honey has the following features:

Quality honey does not roll off the spoon too quickly. Take a tablespoon of honey and turn the spoon over several times in a quick circular motion. Honey will wrap around it, almost not flowing into the jar.
Immerse the spoon into the honey container. Pulling out a spoon, evaluate the nature of the flow of honey. A good one will form a ribbon, sit down in a hillock, and bubbles form on its surface.
All types of honey have a sweet taste, but some of the varieties have a specific taste. For example, tobacco, chestnut and willow varieties have a bitter taste, while heather is astringent. Any deviations in the taste of honey indicate its poor quality. Other taste defects may be due to the presence of impurities. Excessive acidity may be associated with the onset of fermentation, the aroma of caramel is the result of heating, obvious bitterness is incorrect storage conditions for a low-quality product.
The color of honey depends solely on the variety. It can be all shades of brown and yellow. Don't be alarmed by pale yellow, slightly hazy honey - this is normal for acacia honey that has stood for a while, because it is candied very slowly and for a long time - sometimes completely only by the end of winter (but be sure to try it and determine for yourself that it is acacia honey). Turbidity is not inherent in other types of non-candied honey, because. the process of their sugaring (turbidity and hardening) occurs quickly - it was just transparent and suddenly (2-4 weeks after the bribe - the period depends on the type of honey) it was all sugared at once.

Another very simple express check: you need to drop honey on paper and set it on fire. The paper around burns, but real high-quality honey does not burn, does not melt and does not turn brown. If the honey began to melt, it means that the bees were fed with sugar syrup, and if it turns brown, it means that it was diluted with sugar.