How to distinguish pure honey from a fake. Honey

From a fake, because today on the market you can buy both high-quality and fake ones.

There are so many useful properties of honey that it is simply impossible to list them all. Honey is eaten, used in the cosmetic field, with its help they treat the throat and get rid of hematomas, they are used as an additional remedy in the fight against many diseases from the simplest to the most terrible.

Naturally, such versatility and popularity attracts many scammers and speculators selling low-quality honey. The buyer of honey needs to learn how to distinguish honey from a fake, so as not to get into a mess.

honey groups

Honey is divided into three groups according to:

• Origin;
• Manufacturing method;
• Taste, color and texture.

Origin of honey

1. flower honey harvested only from the nectar of flowers, getting a high-quality, tasty product with many useful properties.

• If nectar is collected by a bee by 50% from a single plant, it is called monofloral.
• If from different flowers growing in a garden or in a meadow, then honey is polyfloral.

2.honeydew honey bees do not produce from the nectar of flowers, but from honeydew (sweet juice that the leaves secrete) and honeydew (discharge in the form of liquid sweet drops of grass aphids, mealybugs, celandine fleas). This type of honey is used for processing.

Manufacturing methods

Depending on this parameter, honey happens:

• Gravity flowing from honeycombs;
• Pressed pressed;
• Centrifugal, that is, pumped out by a centrifuge.

It is the latter method that is used more often and transparent pure honey is obtained.

Consistency, color and taste

Honey is liquid or thick in consistency. The color varies from light yellowish to brown, depending on the nectar collected by the bees from the flowers.

All types of honey have a sweet taste, but some of the varieties have a specific taste (tobacco, chestnut and willow varieties have a bitter taste, and heather varieties are 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 due to the onset of fermentation, the aroma of caramel is the result of heating honey, bitterness is due to improper storage conditions.

Linden honey

Light yellow, crystallizes easily, has a characteristic smell of linden flowers.

Acacia honey

Transparent, light, more liquid, with a slight aroma of acacia. Crystallizes slowly.

Buckwheat honey

Bright brown color, with a characteristic smell and slight bitterness.

Field and meadow honey

Light amber or brown in color, with a very pleasant smell and taste. It has almost all medicinal properties.

fruit honey

Collected from berry and fruit crops. Light amber, with a delicate smell and taste. Has dietary properties.

sunflower honey

Golden yellow color, pleasant taste, crystallizes quickly. Anti-allergic, but inferior in medicinal properties to the main types of honey.

Types of fake honey

• Natural honey with additives;
• Honey from non-nectar products;
• Artificial honey.

Natural honey with additives

Often dealers dilute natural honey with additives. It could be sugar syrup tea leaves, starch, chalk, sand and other. Additives may appear unnaturally light or too dark in color or have a caramel-like consistency. Honey becomes cloudy or has sediment.

Honey from non-nectar products

Another type of poor-quality product is honey that is not obtained from nectar. Bees are fed with sugar syrup, receiving processed sugar. To understand how to distinguish honey from a fake, you need to smell it (the smell is similar to sweet water) and try it (sugar crystals or powder will remain in your mouth).

Artificial "honey"

They also prepare completely artificial honey. Sugar syrup with acid is boiled, it is purified with soda, starch and various flavors are added. All this has a sugary taste, may exfoliate or have lumps.

Also, a suspiciously low price indicates a sure sign of a fake. Honey is a costly product and, therefore, expensive. Having met honey at a seductive price on the market, it is best not to rush to buy it, but first think: why does the beekeeper, having spent so much effort to obtain honey, sell it so cheaply? The likelihood that this is a low-quality product, consisting of additives to natural honey, or, even worse, completely artificial, is very high.

How to distinguish honey from a fake on the market

Every year the number of unscrupulous manufacturers and resellers is only growing. And it becomes more difficult to distinguish a natural product from an artificial one. Often visually it is even simply impossible to do. Therefore, other ways have been devised to distinguish honey from a fake.

For an ordinary buyer, there are several simple ways to distinguish honey from a fake.

• Real honey, when you try it, will dissolve evenly and without residue in your mouth, there will be no crystals or powdered sugar on your tongue. Also, after real honey, there will be a little tickle in the throat.
• You can calculate a fake using a glass of water and iodine. Add a little honey to a glass, then water and stir it all. Additives in this case will settle at the bottom. If, when a drop of iodine is added to the solution, the color of the solution turns blue, then starch is present in the "honey".
• You can use the method with a spoon, winding honey on it quickly. Natural honey will become like caramel, twisting without dripping from a spoon. And if it drains, and even bubbles or changes color, then there are obviously additives.
• If honey is allowed to drain from a spoon, natural honey will flow in a continuous stream and lie down in a hill, an intermittent stream and the absence of a slide indicate a fake.
• If you drop a little honey on the paper and leave it for five minutes, the appearance of a wet spot on the reverse side will give out a fake (diluted honey).
• If the surface of the honey is sprinkled with starch, the resulting white film will show that the honey is real. If the starch is absorbed, it is a fake.
• Crystallized honey is sometimes tried to be set on fire. Normal melting will show that the quality is good, and hissing and crackling will indicate the presence of additional components.
• Having smeared a small piece of paper with honey, it is set on fire. A good product will not burn, melt or turn brown.
• Add vinegar to a spoon with honey, if it foams, this means that chalk is present in the "honey".
• A good way to distinguish natural honey from a fake is a regular piece of bread. Dip it in honey for 10-15 minutes. If after this time the bread remains not softened, then everything is in order. If the bread is softened, sugar water is added to the "honey".
• Some scammers manage to add gelatin to increase viscosity. To check honey for the presence of gelatin to 5 ml. aqueous solution of honey add 5-10 drops of 5% tannin solution. The formation of white flakes will indicate the presence of gelatin in honey.

What varieties of honey do not exist?

Some varieties of honey, by their name, should cause caution. Consider several non-existent varieties of "honey".

It is impossible to purchase honey from wild rose, chamomile, corn, lupine, hazel or poppy. The flowers of these plants do not produce nectar.

Honey from royal jelly does not exist, there is a mixture of royal jelly with honey, but it is very difficult to make it at home, and almost impossible to sell.

May honey in the northern regions of Russia - a real beekeeper will not collect in the month of May, since the bees only feed at this time.

From, strawberries, blackberries - plants contain nectar in very small quantities, so it is very difficult to make it for sale. Such honey on the market indicates that the bees were fed with the appropriate juice, which means that the product is of poor quality and it is better not to buy such honey.

You can get honey from pumpkin, but due to the presence of pesticides in it, it can be dangerous.

Real honey has a floral aroma, a pleasant taste, which can be slightly bitter and sore in the throat. Armed with ways to distinguish honey from a fake in appearance and all of the above parameters, you will not fall for a fake, and will use only a high-quality natural product.

When choosing honey for yourself, prefer thicker varieties. If the product has a transparent consistency, it may well be that it was warmed up by the seller.

They learned to fake bee honey a long time ago. Previously, to falsify this product, they used ordinary sugar, water, dyes and flavors. This list has grown over time. Now, invert syrup, molasses, various impurities and chemicals are used to make a fake.

Now control over the quality of honey is a state responsibility. But some people prefer to buy not in stores, but from private individuals. Of course, such honey is not tested for quality. In order to independently distinguish natural honey from fake, you should know some tricks.

How to distinguish natural honey from artificial?

Each buyer must learn to recognize real honey from counterfeit. A natural bee product must comply with some mandatory points:

1. Persistent aroma, in which there are notes of wax, nectar, pollen, sweetness.
2. Natural honey can be stored for a long time without changing its consistency.
3. A real bee elixir has a viscous, rather thick consistency, regardless of the time of its collection. When rubbed with fingers, it is quickly and easily absorbed into the skin. In this case, there should be no lumps left.

How to distinguish fake honey from natural?

The first step is to give the product a visual evaluation. A clear sign that explains how to distinguish honey from a fake is a liquid consistency, which indicates that the product was most likely diluted with syrup. Also, the presence of a large amount of white color in honey indicates the dilution with sugar syrup.

Fake honey can give out the presence of the following indicators:

• heterogeneous consistency;
• uneven color;
• the presence of sediment at the bottom of the container.

How else can you distinguish natural honey?

For this, there are special methods of determination, the effectiveness of which has been tested by time.

One of the most accessible methods is the napkin method. For its implementation, it is necessary to drop honey on a paper surface. If the honey is natural, then a wet spot should not form next to the drop. This is a clear indicator of quality. A real bee elixir lays down in the form of a slide, after which it gradually spreads.

A quality product should stretch from a spoon for a long time, forming a thin long thread.

Natural honey can be, as it were, wound on a spoon. With such actions, it will not immediately drain.

Fake or "fake" honey has at least one of the following features:

1. The presence of a sour smell or the complete absence of aroma.
2. Does not cause a slight burning sensation in the throat.
3. Peel off.
4. Foaming.
5. Has a rough texture.

How to distinguish fake fireweed honey?

Fireweed honey is obtained as a result of the collection of nectar from the fireweed flower by bees. Often such a product has a white color and a specific smell. However, it is very different from ordinary honey and all of the above signs of a poor-quality product do not apply to it.

Fake fireweed honey can be identified by the presence of colorants and chemical additives. To determine, you need to take two hundred grams of honey and a little more than a glass of water. Mix thoroughly and add a few drops of ammonia. The subsequent formation of a precipitate indicates that the honey is adulterated.

When buying any kind of honey, you should pay attention to the price. If its market value is clearly underestimated, then most likely the product is of poor quality. At a low price, sugar syrup is often put up for sale, tinted with tea leaves and mixed with a small amount of real honey.

Hello dear readers! If you often check my blog, you know that I often use honey in my recipes. Today I want to talk to you about him. What are the types and varieties? How to check the quality of honey at home? Where to buy good honey? You will find answers to these questions and other interesting facts in this article.

A bit of history

The mention of honey was found in Egyptian hieroglyphs. The pharaohs used it as a monetary equivalent and considered it the most valuable offering for their gods. Honey is mentioned in the Bible, and the Greeks considered it the food of the gods. In the eleventh century, it was offered to German lords as a ransom for peasants.

Today it is used as a remedy and just a delicious treat. This is a universal healing tool that can improve human health at any age.

At the end of summer, beekeepers organize fairs where you can buy a variety of bee products. Each buyer may encounter a fake of this useful product. To prevent this from happening, I propose to consider the most sophisticated methods of falsification.

There are several ways to fake

1. Feeding bees with sugar - within acceptable limits (no more than 8 kg per season), feeding is necessary for bees to survive. This is compensation for pumped out honey. Even in this form, sugar syrup passed through the proboscis is enriched with protein, but such a product contains almost no useful trace elements in its composition.
2. Another way to falsify is to add sugar diluted in water with citric acid, flavors can be added. This species is distinguished by a suspiciously white color.
3. Watermelon or melon juices can be added, which, when evaporated, acquire viscous properties. For hydrolysis, citric acid is used, and the smell is given with the help of artificial honey essence or natural honey. To do this, use varieties that have bright aromas (buckwheat, coriander or linden).
4. Sometimes potato or corn starch, ordinary chalk or wheat flour are added. These additives significantly increase the volume of the product. You can determine them by dropping a drop of iodine into honey dissolved in water. If the honey is of poor quality, then blue stains will appear.

For coloring add tea, St. John's wort or turmeric. Additional dyes may precipitate upon dissolution. Artificial honey has believable properties, it has a pleasant taste and smell.

Sometimes it is possible to detect falsification only in laboratory conditions. It contains simple carbohydrates, minerals, but lacks bioactive substances, dextrans and pollen.

How to choose the right look

The natural product has various shades: from light to dark or brown. Dark is more useful (buckwheat, burdock), as it contains more minerals, iron, copper, manganese. Light - linden, cotton, acacia. It is very fragrant. Honey collected from different plants is called polypheric.

Natural honey contains pollen particles and will crystallize over time. Fake, transparent, prone to flaking and will always have a runny consistency.

• Taste

The taste should be sugary-astringent. Buckwheat and sunflower have the brightest and most pronounced taste, and linden is very delicate. Real, bakes and dissolves in the mouth. If there is a fake, it does not dissolve and there is a taste of caramel or sugar syrup, it does not leave a pleasant burning sensation.

• Action on the skin

A good one is completely absorbed into the skin and easily rubbed. A fake leaves a sticky trail and undissolved grains.

• Paper check

The drop should not spread over the paper. From "linden", a stain spreads on paper. This indicates the presence of water in the contents.

• By consistency

Natural flows down from the spoon continuously, in a thin thread, and is laid in layers in the pagoda. Poor quality, drips and leaves splashes. A drop of counterfeit immediately falls into the bulk.

• Checking for sugar

A piece of bread is dipped in honey, in natural it will harden, in fake it will soften.

• How to determine the presence of chalk?

Chalk is added to give density to honey diluted with water. It is colorless and odorless. You can identify it by dripping with vinegar - a hiss appears.

• Determination of counterfeit using metal

Identification of natural honey using a hot wire, based on its properties, does not stick to hot metal objects. The fake will stay on the stick.

• By weight

High quality, heavier than unnatural. A liter can of the present weighs at least 1.4 kilograms.

Proper storage

Store in a ceramic jar or small dark glass container. You can use enamelware or stainless steel, and crystallized dishes made of waxed paper are suitable. An iron container is not suitable, as it may oxidize with the formation of substances hazardous to health.

Wooden containers are not suitable for everyone. From oak - it will give honey a dark color, and coniferous varieties - bitterness.

Honey is able to adsorb foreign odors, so you need to keep it away from strong-smelling substances. It also absorbs moisture, which makes it liquid, so the place must be dry.

Varieties of honey

Acacia. Light yellow in color, has a decongestant property and the ability to dilute bile. Bees collect it during the flowering period of acacia - May, and pump it out already in mid-July. This is one of the most valuable varieties. It contains a complete set of vitamins and minerals. Basic properties:

• useful in blood diseases;
• increases the level of hemoglobin;
• improves sleep;
• normalizes carbohydrate metabolism;
• stimulates the brain;
• used for skin diseases.

It is used for sports nutrition, as an energy supplement, and also for diabetic treatment. Acacia honey can be pale yellow or white, depending on the type of acacia it was harvested from. Natural honey is not bitter, it is liquid and viscous. In one day, the bee family collects 12 kg of this product.

Mountain- refers to polypheric (forbs). Harvested in a clean mountain climate, it has healing properties. The color varies from light to brown. It has a spicy, fruity flavor and is rich in trace elements. Used to treat anemia and hypovitaminosis. Has antifungal properties. Topically used for wound healing. Helps with diseases of the respiratory tract, oral cavity, heart and vascular system.

Buckwheat- is considered the most useful. Refers to dark varieties. It has a pronounced aroma. It contains antibiotics and enzymes. The unique combination of nutrients has made it indispensable for infectious diseases.

Buckwheat honey has a bactericidal effect against staphylococcus and Escherichia coli. The healing properties are enhanced when combined with vitamin C. It has an expectorant and diaphoretic effect, therefore it is effective for colds and pulmonary diseases.

Clover- white or amber. It has a peculiar, candy taste, transparent color and herbal aroma. It has a healing effect in diseases of the liver, heart, gynecological diseases. It has a regenerating effect, is used to treat wounds.

forbs- honey is obtained from flowering plants, trees and shrubs growing in the same area. Collected throughout the summer. It may have a different color and aroma of plants prevailing in this area. Golden brown. Has a bactericidal effect. Used for various inflammatory diseases, insomnia and sclerosis.

Honey is a useful dietary product. 100 grams contains 300 kilocalories, and sugar - 400. It is not recommended for people suffering from carbohydrate metabolism disorders and allergic reactions.

Where to buy honey

Now there is a lot of low-quality honey, both on store shelves and in the markets. The product is not cheap and it's a pity when you run into a fake.

Naturally, the most reliable way to avoid falsifications is to get your own honey or buy it from relatives and friends. But you must admit, not everyone has their own apiary or acquaintances in the countryside.

Therefore, to buy honey, I can suggest a trusted place - a store Ecotopia. I have been taking it there for a year now and I can say that there is a really high-quality product at good prices. There are shops in St. Petersburg and Moscow. For other regions there is delivery by mail. I don't know the shipping cost though.

If you know of other ways to determine the quality of honey, I will be glad to learn about them. Please write comments and subscribe to my blog.

All the best! Dorofeev Pavel.

1. The highest quality honey- this is honey in already sealed combs. If the honeycombs are not sealed, then the honey is not mature and, accordingly, does not contain all the useful substances.

2. If it is not possible to buy honey in combs, try to find unfiltered honey, which contains pollen, perga. Such honey will not be clean in appearance, it will contain the remains of pollen and perga.

3. If you buy honey in a store, the very first thing to do is read the label, which sometimes says that there are various additives. In natural honey, of course, there should be no additives.

4. Real honey is viscous and viscous, fake honey or honey that has undergone heating is liquid.

5. Real honey has a slightly floral scent. Fake honey is odorless or may have a slightly sour smell.

6. When heated, fake honey begins to bubble. Real honey is caramelized and does not foam.

Please note that most sell honey in plastic, and plastic releases harmful substances, resulting in intoxication of the body.

7. Real honey never spoils.

8. Pay attention to which honey plants honey was collected from, for ourselves we try to buy honey collected from wild plants that have not been chemically processed. Although there are no guarantees that this honey is environmentally friendly, as there are factors such as: the track, chemtrails, chemical emissions, etc.

9. The naturalness of honey can be checked with bread. Real honey is not absorbed into bread.

The most suitable storage temperature for honey is 5-10 degrees, dry and ventilated. When honey is heated to 37 degrees, volatile antimicrobial substances are lost. Up to 45 degrees - the enzyme invertase is destroyed. Up to 50 degrees - diastasis is destroyed. The sun's rays also reduce the healing properties of honey.

How We Caught Fake Honey

Before writing about ways to check honey, I would like to tell you about my personal experience, what kind of fake we came across. We bought a 3 liter jar of honey. On top was honey, about 1/3 of a jar, and on the bottom was sugar mixed with honey. And it was very disappointing, given that we deliberately do not eat sugar.

As soon as the layer with sugar began, it became noticeable in taste and structure. The honey taste almost disappeared immediately, the mass was just sweet and had a slightly pronounced taste of honey. The honey itself was already candied, so the grains of sugar were disguised as crystallized honey.

We wouldn't notice the difference if we didn't eat real candied honey. Such honey has a completely different texture and taste of sugar, it is difficult to explain its properties, but I will try: it is brittle on the teeth, not as hard as ordinary sugar and it feels like sugar has not completely dissolved in honey.

In general, the conclusion from this situation is this: if you buy honey in large quantities, then only from trusted beekeepers, or get yourself bees and already be sure of the naturalness and benefits of the product.

Checking honey at home

I would like to note that the most accurate tests can only be carried out in laboratory conditions.

Viscosity. When determining the quality of honey, viscosity is important. Viscosity is checked with a spoon. The spoon is dipped into honey and rotated around its axis, if the honey does not drain, but wraps around the spoon, then it is mature. In this case, the temperature should not be lower than 20 degrees so that the viscosity does not increase from low temperatures.

Finger check. Put some honey on your finger, if it does not spread, then it is real honey.

Honey can be mixed: sugar, potato syrup, corn syrup, water, honeydew honey, flour, chalk, sawdust, glucose, dextrose and other substances.

1 way to test honey. Distilled water is added to honey so much that the honey becomes liquid. Then this liquid is poured into a test tube. An impurity will be detected in the sediment or on the surface.

Flammability test. Take a dry match. Dip its tip directly into honey. Light a match. If the honey is pure, the match will light easily. The flame will also burn from the honey. However, if it contains, for example, water, the match will not burn due to moisture.

Starch test. Add distilled water to honey, stir and add a drop of iodine. If the liquid turns blue, then the honey contains starch.

If you pour some honey on paper and the paper becomes saturated with honey, then the honey contains starch or water.

Chalk content test. Add distilled water to honey, stir and add acetic acid. In the presence of chalk, a reaction will occur and the liquid will foam.

Water content test. Fill a glass with water. Add one tablespoon of honey. Fake or artificial honey dissolves in water. Pure honey will sink to the bottom.

One more way. Put a little honey on a napkin, if it contains water, a wet spot will appear on the napkin.

starch molasses. If cold-made molasses was added to honey, it will not crystallize and will have a viscous consistency. You can also test with alcohol. You need to take 1 part of honey, add 3 parts of distilled water and add ¼ of the resulting mass of 96% alcohol. Shake. In the presence of starch syrup, a milky-white liquid is formed.

If molasses obtained by heating was used as an impurity, then at home it is not possible to determine its presence; for this, an analysis is carried out using barium chloride.

sugar syrup. To determine the presence of sugar molasses, you need to dilute the honey with distilled water to get a 10% solution and add a sample of silver nitrate. In the presence of molasses, a precipitate forms.

It is not difficult to buy high-quality natural honey if you know how to choose it. You can avoid buying a fake bee product by learning a few tricks. About ways to distinguish real honey from a fake and what methods to use for this, read our material.

Any buyer should be able to recognize real honey and be able to distinguish it from a fake. Sometimes it happens that, focusing only on the appearance in the bank, a person buys a product, and when he comes home, he does not notice the substitution for a long time. Natural bee elixir must meet several mandatory points. Which one, see below:

1. First of all, you need to determine if there is a persistent smell. The aroma coming from the jar will always tell you which product is in front of you - real or fake. Honey, in which there are no syrups, which have not been boiled and mixed with various additives, smells like a honeycomb from a beehive - wax, nectar, pollen, sweetness, directly honey.
2. Natural sweetness is stored for a very long time without changing the taste, while fake goods almost always deteriorate, either begin to ferment, or delaminate and acquire an ugly forked texture.
3. The consistency of liquid bee gold is always quite thick, even if the mass is recently collected. A texture that is too thin indicates that the substance was diluted or collected too early.
4. Delicious in present condition, does not deteriorate after crystallization. Different varieties can thicken in different ways, it's all about storage conditions. Crystals can be either very small or quite large. But there should not be too large sugar "snowflakes" in the bee mass.
5. The weight of mature honey is at least 1.4 kilograms per liter.

How not to be confused with a fake?

So, how to determine that you have a counterfeit product? Pay attention to how the honey lies in the jar. This product should not delaminate. The homogeneity of the mass without sediment and foam, uniform color and the absence of large bubbles inside the jar indicates that the honey was stored in the right conditions.

Do not be afraid to taste or even rub the mass between your fingers. A real delicacy sticks well and forms an adhesive film, but a fake one leaves a feeling of excess moisture.

Honey should not splatter when dropped from a whisk or spoon. It is easy to distinguish a watery substance from a fake - put a small drop on a napkin. If a wet mark has formed near the stain, the mass is clearly diluted. A drop of this delicacy will keep its shape for a long time. This method is good for home use.

When tasting honey, scoop it with a spoon or a special whisk from the very bottom of the jar or other container in which it is poured. So you can find out if there is a candied layer below (if the container is opaque). If the bottom is thickened and the top is liquid, perhaps this is not a fake, but a mixture of several varieties.

You should not take such a product either, since mixing old, more mature and fresh honey can lead to a deterioration in taste. Thus, in order to distinguish a good product from a counterfeit, ordinary observation is also required.

If you can’t distinguish a fake from the original on your own, use the advice of experienced beekeepers.

Video "Distinguishing a real product from a fake"

Expert advice on how to distinguish natural honey without buying counterfeit. These recommendations and secrets will help you buy a really worthwhile product, the taste of which has no equal!