How to eat honey? When should I eat? Can I drink it with tea?

First, the method of eating, fresh honey can be taken directly or as an aqueous solution, but don't brew it with boiling water or cook it at high temperature, because the effective ingredients such as enzymes are destroyed after high temperature. Honey is best taken after being diluted with warm water or cold water below 40 degrees.

2. Administration time: Generally, it is appropriate to take 1 ~ 1.5 hours before meals or 2-3 hours after meals. People with neurasthenia should take it before going to bed every day.

Dosage: As a treatment or adjuvant treatment, adults should take100g daily, not exceeding 200g, three times in the morning, middle and evening. It is best for children to take 30 grams, but it depends on their age. Used for treatment, with two months as a course of treatment; As a health care product, the dosage can be reduced as appropriate, generally 10 ~ 50g per day.

In addition, diabetic patients had better not take it. At present, honey on the market is divided into pure honey and blended honey. Generally, the specialty stores of bee products in apiary directly sell mature pure honey, while the shops sell blended honey and pure honey. Most of the honey sold in the street is inferior and adulterated, and the price is cheap and the quality is difficult to guarantee. Some lawless elements, even adding some chemical raw materials, contain a lot of heavy metals and pathogenic bacteria, and must not be greedy for petty gains and suffer.

Honey is different-which is better?

Honey is divided into jujube flower, Sophora japonica flower and Jinghua flower.

It can be divided into dark color and light color according to color.

According to the crowd, it is divided into honey for the elderly and honey for children.

Different flowers, different smells, different tastes;

The difference in color is mainly due to the different types of flowers, which are light honey and thick honey.

But its main nutritional components are basically the same. Now honey suitable for the elderly, children and people with calcium supplementation has been developed on the market according to different groups of people. The choice of elbow should be decided according to the object. Old people are suitable to choose old honey, calcium-rich honey and jujube honey. Children are suitable to choose children's honey and calcium-rich honey. Infants are suitable for breast milk honey, and ordinary people can choose Sophora japonica honey and pure honey. Provided by the Honey Professional Committee of China Bee Products Association.

Honey has many benefits and tastes sweet. "Shen Nong Ben Cao Jing" said, "Inner evil is the main source of convulsion, convulsion and convulsion, which can relieve the deficiency of the five internal organs, replenish qi, relieve pain and eliminate diseases. It can be seen that it has two major effects of treating diseases and strengthening the body. Its functions are summarized as follows:

Clearing heat. "Materia Medica for the Prevention of Diseases" says, "If you feel hot and your limbs are not harmonious, it is good to eat a bowl of honey syrup". Because honey has the function of nourishing yin, it is suitable for people with deficiency heat. Recently, it has been used for rhinitis, sinusitis, corneal ulcer and facial limbitis.

Make up for it Honey can nourish the temper. In ancient times, it was said that it was refreshing after a long service, with beautiful appearance, strong will, strong intelligence, no hunger and no aging, and it was suitable for weak hands and aftercare after illness. Therefore, "medicine meaning" has the essence of honey picking flowers, sweet taste and nourishing the five internal organs.

Detoxify. Can be used for treating various dermatitis and trichomonas vaginalis, and relieving aconitine toxicity and alcohol toxicity. Modern scientific research believes that caffeic acid has anti-cancer effect. It is reported that honey is a good oral disinfectant in Russia. Because honey can detoxify and tonify, the ancients often used it to make various creams. In the United States, honey mixed with various fruit juices was used as clarifier, and the effect was ideal, and the nutritional value could be maintained.

Moisten dryness. It can treat lung dryness and cough. Ginger is better. Zhang Xichun believes that its nature is "cool and smooth, and it is also an important product for clearing and moistening the lungs, benefiting phlegm and relieving cough"; Old people are short of body fluid, so they can take this boiled water to moisten them.

Pain relief. Honey has acute and analgesic effects. Dr. Wei Changchun often takes it with Wu Mei An Wei Pill to treat biliary ascariasis, cholecystitis and gallstones. External application of honey can also treat burns, frostbite and various injuries.

However, it should be noted that people with excessive phlegm, abdominal distension and diarrhea should use honey with caution.

Modern pharmacological research has proved that honey for external use has many functions, such as detoxification, antibacterial, anti-inflammatory, moisturizing, antiseptic, wound protection, cell regeneration, exudate absorption and so on.

How to eat honey

1, honey can't be boiled with boiling water or cooked at high temperature, because unreasonable heating will seriously destroy the nutrients in honey, inactivate the enzymes in honey, darken the color, volatilize the fragrance, change the taste and have an unpleasant sour taste. High temperature destroys the unique fragrance and taste of honey, which makes it volatilize, reduces the antibacterial effect and destroys the nutritional components. So honey is best diluted with warm water or cold water below 40℃. Especially in hot summer, drinking honey with cold water is a good cool and healthy drink.

2. The eating time of honey is very particular. Generally speaking, it is more appropriate to eat honey before meals 1- 1.5 hours or 2-3 hours after meals. However, for patients with gastrointestinal diseases, the eating time should be determined according to the condition, so as to play its medical role. If you eat honey one and a half hours before meals, it can inhibit the secretion of gastric acid; If you eat honey immediately after eating, it will stimulate gastric acid secretion; Warm honey solution can dilute gastric juice and reduce its acidity, while cold honey solution can increase the acidity of gastric juice and stimulate intestinal movement, so it can be used for diarrhea. Therefore, patients with hyperacidity or hypertrophic gastritis, especially those with gastric and duodenal ulcer soup, eat warm honey water 1.5 hours before meals, which can not only inhibit gastric acid secretion, but also reduce gastric acid, thus reducing the irritation to gastric mucosa and facilitating the healing of ulcer surface; Patients with gastric acid deficiency or atrophic gastritis should eat cold honey water immediately after eating. People with neurasthenia eat honey before going to bed every day, which can promote sleep, because honey has the function of calming the nerves, increasing wisdom and improving sleep.

Matters needing attention in eating honey

1, not suitable for eating with tofu. Tofu is sweet, salty and cold, which can clear away heat and disperse blood. Eating with honey is easy to have diarrhea. At the same time, there are many enzymes, minerals, plant proteins and organic acids in honey. The harmful substances in tofu are not conducive to the biochemical reaction of human body.

2, not suitable for eating with leeks. Leek is rich in vitamin C, which is easily oxidized by copper and iron in honey and loses its function. In addition, honey can relieve constipation, and leek is rich in cellulose to induce diarrhea, which is easy to cause diarrhea.

In life, we often eat honey, but how to choose, store and eat honey to ensure its curative effect on the body?

How to choose natural high-quality honey

People often cheat honey. Some people mix sugar, starch, flour and other ingredients to get fake honey. Some beekeepers put diluted sugar in front of the beehive, and bees collect diluted sugar instead of nectar, which leads to low quality of honey.

Therefore, you must be more careful when buying honey from individual beekeepers. You can use the following methods to identify the authenticity of honey: put a drop of honey between your fingers and grind it. It will really be absorbed by the skin, and the fake one will become a small drop of water. But low-quality honey can only be identified by sending it to a special laboratory.

You can't put honey in boiled tea.

When honey exceeds 40℃, many useful substances will be lost, and the vitamins and antibacterial substances contained in it will also be partially destroyed.

In addition, drinking hot tea with honey will make you sweat a lot and your heart beat faster, which is not suitable for patients with cardiovascular diseases.

Honey can normalize stomach acid.

Honey can increase the acidity of the stomach that is too low and reduce the acidity that is too high. When you have gastritis with low acidity, you should put a spoonful of honey in a glass of cold water and drink it before meals. When you have gastritis with high acidity, you should melt honey with warm water and drink it one and a half hours or two after meals.

Honey helps to lose weight.

If you drink half a glass of water with a teaspoon of honey before meals, the sugar in your blood will increase, which means that your appetite will decrease and you won't gobble up when you eat.

Honey is a good medicine for anemia.

Not all kinds of honey can increase the amount of hemoglobin, so people with anemia had better eat dark varieties like buckwheat nectar, which contains more than five times as much iron as bright varieties.

Honey has a calming and sleeping effect.

If you add some honey to a cup of warm water or warm milk and drink it before going to bed, you will fall asleep quickly and sleep soundly all night.

Pine leaf honey bath is very effective in treating insomnia and preventing colds. Put a small bag of pine needles in the bathtub, then add half a cup of honey to the bath water and wash it for 20 minutes.

It is best not to drink honey before the child is two years old.

Honey contains bacterial cysts that endanger children's health. The digestive system of older children and adults can neutralize these pathogens, but children's bodies still lack this resistance.

Some adults should not eat honey.

For example, diabetics and people who are allergic to honey should not eat honey. By the way, these people will have itchy rashes, lumps and even vomiting after eating honey.

There are two correct ways to eat honey: one is to take it with cold boiled water, so do it.

Vitamin C oxidase in honey will not be destroyed, and it can relieve summer heat and detoxify in summer.

Use; The second is warm boiled water, which can play the role of tonifying the middle energizer and benefiting qi, and will not destroy each other.

A nutrient.

But in daily life, many people are used to using high temperature or boiled water.

Taking honey is unscientific. Because doing so will make the honey in the class

Substances and some vitamins are destroyed, resulting in excessive hydroxymethyl glycolaldehyde, which makes honey

The nutrition of food has been greatly destroyed. In addition, taking honey with hot boiled water will make it sweet and delicious.

The channel changes to produce sour taste.

Respondent: Jiao Yujia-probationary period level 1 1-30 20:55

People often ask such a question: Is "raw honey" better or "cooked honey"? Can raw honey be eaten directly?

In fact, honey is neither "raw" nor "cooked". Honey is usually taken out of the beehive, filtered and repackaged and directly marketed. Of course, some honey, such as Vitex negundo, is easy to crystallize in winter. In order to facilitate filtration and sub-packaging, it is generally necessary to heat and melt, but the heating temperature generally does not exceed 50℃, otherwise it is easy to destroy the active substances in it, so this kind of honey cannot be called cooked honey.

Although there is no distinction between raw and cooked honey, the application of honey in traditional Chinese medicine can be divided into two categories according to its use. Raw food refers to direct consumption, such as moistening lung and relieving cough, treating weak constipation of the elderly after illness, or as a nutritional tonic for external use to treat burns; After refining and ripening, it is used for honey roasting, pill making and paste collection.

The quality requirements of these two kinds of honey are quite different.

The higher the maturity of honey, the richer the content of nutrients and therapeutic substances in honey, so the maturity is a crucial index of raw honey. Moreover, clinical verification shows that even if semi-mature honey is concentrated under reduced pressure during processing, its curative effect is reduced, which is incomparable to natural mature honey. It is speculated that the active components and volatile oil with therapeutic effect in honey are related to the destruction and loss during processing. Therefore, the production of high-quality mature honey for raw materials is the guarantee of curative effect.

Interviewee: Self-help-assistant level 2 1-30 2 1:04.

Honey knowledge

Source and type

Human beings have a long history of using bee products, among which honey is the earliest dessert used by human beings. Bees make honey for food, and human beings have developed this resource. In the early days, humans may have stumbled upon this sweet substance in honeycombs in hollow trees, wood or caves. In Africa, indigenous villagers used a bird called the honey-seeker to help them find the beehive of African honey and then cut it open. Honey was once considered as a symbol of great wealth. The Bible tells people that God promised the Jews a land flowing with milk and honey. Before sucrose and beet sugar were discovered, honey was the only sweetener for human beings. In the caves discovered by Spanish archaeologists, murals of human honey collection have appeared, which has a history of 8,000 years. The word "honey" appeared in Oracle Bone Inscriptions unearthed from Yin Ruins in China. In addition, as early as 3500 years ago, the ancient Egyptians knew that honey was used to treat diseases. In the Ayveda school of ancient India, honey and milk were listed as "life-prolonging" drinks. In addition to honey, bee pollen, royal jelly and propolis are also well-known bee products, and the use of bee venom has gradually attracted attention.

I. Sources and types of honey

(A) the source of honey

Honey is the main product of bees. It is a sweet, viscous, transparent or translucent liquid. Honey mainly comes from nectar, followed by nectar and honey dew. Nectar is nectar secreted by plant flowers, and nectar is excreta of aphids, leafhoppers, etc. Honey dew is nectar secreted by plants outside flowers. Bees suck nectar, tree juice or sweet couple secreted by nectar tubes of aphids and leafhoppers with tongue tubes, which are mixed with saliva through bee mouthparts, temporarily stored in safety bags, returned to nests, vomited in nests and brewed repeatedly.

(2) Types of honey

China has a vast territory, a wide variety of honey sources and various production methods, so there are many kinds of honey in China, mainly single nectar.

L, classified by source

We know that when bees brew honey, the main source of' processing raw materials' they collect is nectar, but when honey sources are scarce, bees also collect nectar or honey dew, so we divide honey into natural honey and nectar honey.

Natural honey is brewed by bees collecting nectar. They come from the inner or outer nectaries of plants. Usually, what we call honey is natural honey, and because it comes from different honey source plants, it can be divided into various single nectars based on the flowering period of a certain plant, such as litchi honey, locust honey, Chinese milk vetch honey, rape seed, jujube honey, wild osmanthus honey, linden honey and so on.

Although bees only collect nectar from one plant at a time, most honey often contains pollen or nectar from several plants. For example, longan follows Chinese milk vetch at the end of litchi blossom, and Chinese milk vetch follows Chinese milk vetch at the end of rape blossom, so longan nectar must contain litchi honey, and Chinese milk vetch must contain a small amount of rape nectar at the end of nectar flow. Generally speaking, honey is named after flowers from one or several major sources. Generally speaking, a single nectar is the pollen proportion of nectar-source plants. For example, Tilia amurensis pollen should be the absolute advantage in northeast linden honey, but there are many nectaries obtained by flowering at the same time, because it has more than two kinds of pollen mixed together, which is generally called mixed nectar or hundred flowers' honey.

Before people knew about honey plants, honey was divided into spring honey, summer honey, autumn honey and winter honey only according to the production season.

Mannan honey is honey collected by bees from the leaves or stems of plants or the metabolite of insects-honey brewed by nectar. Aphids absorb the juice of plants through the digestive system, protein and sugar in it, and then excrete excess sugar and water and sprinkle it on the branches and leaves of plants, which will be used by bees to brew nectar.

2, according to the physical state classification

Honey has two different physical states at normal temperature and pressure, namely liquid state and crystal state (whether honey is stored in honey or separated from the nest room). Under normal circumstances, the honey just separated is liquid, clear and transparent, and has good fluidity. When honey is left for a period of time or at low temperature, most of it will form solid crystals, so people usually divide it into liquid honey and crystalline honey.

Crystalline honey can be divided into large crystals, small crystals and greasy crystals due to different crystal sizes, and crystals with a particle size of 0.5 microns are large crystals; Particles with a diameter less than 0.5 micron are small crystals; Crystal particles are very small and look uniform, which are called greasy crystals or oily crystals.

3. Classification by mode of production

According to the different methods of making honey, it can be divided into separated honey and nest honey.

Separated honey, also known as centrifugal honey or machine honey, is honey taken out of the hive, put into a honey shaker, shaken out by centrifugal force, filtered, or separated from the honey card by other methods. This fresh honey is generally in a transparent liquid state, and some separated honey will crystallize after a period of time, for example, rape honey will crystallize soon after it is taken out. Some honey will crystallize at low temperature or after a period of time.

Nest honey, also known as grid honey, uses the biological characteristics of bees. In a standardized beehive, honey cubes and nest honey brewed with honey in the nest not only have the function of separating honey, but also have the service of beehive. It is considered as the most perfect and top-grade natural honey product. People can produce single honey in different formats according to the flow law of nectar from nectar source plants and the habit of bees to cover the honey spleen. A nested frame can be divided into 4 blocks, 8 blocks and 12 blocks. Experiments show that as long as there is enough external honey source, no matter the size of the square, bees can make cards, fill honey and cover. The larger the area of a single honey block, the faster the sealing. Honeycomb safety in the market is made of transparent and nontoxic hard plastic grids with different sizes and shapes, or sealed honey brands are divided into honey blocks with knives and packed in hard plastic boxes. First, make a nest frame with a certain format, then embed a small nest base in the grid, put it into the nest frame, and put it into a honey collection group, so that bees can build a nest spleen in the grid, store honey, cover it to form nest honey, and then brew it into qualified nest honey.

4, according to the color classification

Different kinds of nectar plants have great differences in the color of honey. Whether it is a single flower or a mixed honey seed, it has a certain color, and it is often a honey seed with simple color, which tastes and smells good. Therefore, the color of honey can be used not only as the basis for honey classification, but also as one of the indicators to measure the quality of honey. Generally speaking, light honey is better than dark honey in quality. In the international money market, honey is divided into special honey (single flower honey) and mixed honey, and the colors are also different. It is divided into seven grades: water white, extra white, white, extra light amber, light amber, amber and dark amber. The basis for distinguishing colors is Pfonte colorimeter, and the grades are as follows according to the readings of Pfonte colorimeter:

Water white 8 mm

Tebai 8-17mm

White17-34mm

Ultra light amber 34-50mm

Light amber 50-85mm

Amber 85-114mm

Dark amber114-140mm

raw material

Honey is a highly complex sugar mixture, the main component is sugar, accounting for more than three quarters of the total honey, including monosaccharide, disaccharide and polysaccharide. But for all kinds of honey, the proportion of these sugars has a consistent feature, that is, the sum of fructose and glucose accounts for 85% ~ 95% of honey sugar, and in almost all kinds of honey, the main fructose (fructose) is dominant, such as Vitex negundo. The contents of sucrose and maltose in all kinds of honey are very small, about a few percent. In addition, there are protein, amino acids, organic acids, vitamins, pigments and aromatic substances in honey. Except for dry matter, the rest is water.

Moisture refers to the natural moisture contained in honey, and the moisture content indicates the maturity of honey. The average natural water content of mature pure honey brewed by bees is about 65438 08%, generally not more than 20%. The natural water content of honey is influenced by many factors, such as the species of collected honey plants, the strength of bee colony, the length of honey period, the temperature and humidity of air, the storage mode of honey, etc., which will all cause the change of water content. Honey with natural water content above 20%. The water content of honey that is easy to ferment in bee nests is natural, which is left after nectar is brewed and matured. Improper storage of separated honey will reduce the moisture concentration in the air and easily lead to honey deterioration. Therefore, attention should be paid when taking honey and storing it.

Sugar is the most abundant carbohydrate in nature. It is a polyhydroxy ketone with potential activity, or a compound that can produce this polyhydroxy acid when hydrolyzed. Sugar, the carbohydrate in honey, accounts for 3/4 of the total components, among which fructose and glucose account for 85% ~ 95% of the total sugar.

Honey is a mixture of glucose, fructose, sucrose, maltose and "honey dextrin". The latest research found that honey is a highly complex mixture of sugars except glucose, fructose, sucrose and malt extract. It also contains maltobiose, α-trehalose, trehalose, kelp disaccharide, melezitose, etc. Of course, most of these sugars do not exist in nectar. Therefore, people think that it may be formed by the action of enzymes and acids in honey during brewing or storage, and it is also the reason why honey has sweetness, hygroscopicity and high energy. Because fructose and glucose are absolutely dominant. Except those honey with fast crystallization, such as rape honey and cotton honey, the content of glucose is more than fructose, and most honey has more fructose than glucose, so the left-handed honey with higher fructose content has stronger sweetness. If the sweetness of sucrose is 100, then the sweetness ratio of fructose to sucrose and glucose is 175: 100. 75。 Fructose and glucose are both small molecules, which can be directly absorbed by the human body without digestion. Because honey is a high concentration of sugar, its specific heat and higher heat energy are also high. People have long regarded it as energy food.

The average content of protein in honey is 0.3%, and the variation range is 0. 1% ~ 2.42%. The average content of amino acids is 0. 00476%, the range is 0. 0008%-0.0375%. protein is a special medium in the process of life metabolism and the basic substance of all organs and tissues. Protein and amino acids in honey also play an important role in digestion, metabolism and protective reaction of the body. Minerals, also known as inorganic salts or ash. The content of minerals in honey is very low, generally 0.03%-0.9%. The main minerals are iron, copper, potassium, sodium, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, silicon, zinc and selenium. Dark honey contains more minerals than light honey. Although the mineral content in honey is not high, it is worth noting that it is similar to the mineral content in human blood, and honey is added to the diet instead of sugar. It can improve people's intake of minerals, which is another nutritional value of honey, because minerals play an important role in human body. They constitute the human skeleton and participate in the metabolism of every organ and cell. Minerals are not only elements that constitute cells and tissues, but also participate in many metabolic processes of cells and interstitial fluid. Minerals can also promote the activation of many systems, and all organs and tissues of the human body can carry out normal life activities. Minerals play a very important role, so honey contains minerals similar to human body and has certain nutritional value.

Vitamins are relatively simple organic compounds that are absolutely necessary for life, although they are rare and cannot be used as energy. People and animals can't grow and develop normally without vitamins, and vitamin deficiency occurs. When there is "vitamin deficiency", adding a small amount of corresponding vitamins to the diet will improve the condition. If you treat scurvy, only vitamin C is effective.

The vitamins contained in honey are mainly B vitamins and vitamin C, and sulfur (vitamin B 1) can prevent beriberi. Lack of B2 will lead to angular stomatitis, lack of vitamin C will lead to scurvy, and lack of B6 will lead to anemia and lymphoid tissue atrophy and stop growing. Deficiencies of pantothenic acid (B5), folic acid (BC) and nicotinic acid (PP) will cause corresponding diseases, and honey contains many vitamins. Although the content is not high, it plays a very important role in human metabolism. The vitamins in honey mainly come from pollen, and storage under acidic conditions can slow down the destruction of vitamins. In the process of honey processing and filtering, pollen is filtered out, and the temperature is very high. Greatly reduce vitamins.

Enzymes are catalytic proteins produced by organisms, and their functions are highly specific. Enzymes in honey come from bees themselves, nectar plants they collect and some insects that secrete nectar. The enzymes contained in it include invertase, amylase, glucose oxidase and so on. The most important enzyme in honey is invertase, whose function is to hydrolyze starch and glycogen or dextrin. The content of amylase in insufficiently brewed honey is low, and the amylase in honey heated at high temperature or stored for a long time will also be destroyed. Amylase value in honey is the basis for judging mature honey and immature honey, raw honey and heated honey, new honey and old honey.

Because honey plants are different. Different bee species have different honey enzyme values. In the international money market, it is emphasized that the enzyme value must meet the prescribed standards, and all honey with an acid value below 8.0 is considered unqualified.

Honey contains a variety of acids, mainly gluconic acid and citric acid, in addition to acetic acid, butyric acid, malic acid and succinic acid. The acid in honey complicates the taste of honey. Because honey contains high concentration of fructose, it masks the sour taste when the sweetness is high. The sour taste of honey is strong and light. It can distinguish whether honey is fermented or adulterated. According to the acidity of honey, it can be used as a standard to measure its quality. The acidity of normal honey is below 3 and never exceeds 4.

Honey also contains amino acids, such as alanine, arginine, glutamic acid, aspartic acid, histidine, lysine, phenylalanine, proline, serine, etc. Some honey also contains cystine.

Besides containing organic acids, honey fermentation is mainly the result of sugar-tolerant yeast activities. Because sugar-tolerant yeast proliferates in large quantities when it is suitable for its breeding conditions, it decomposes the sugar in honey, produces alcohol and ferments, forms carbon dioxide, and even forms foam on the surface, which is honey fermentation.

Physical status quo

There are other ingredients in honey, such as aromatic substances and colloidal substances. Different single-flower honey contains different aromatic components, so the color, fragrance and taste are different. Aromatic substances are mainly alcohols and their derivatives-aldehydes, ketones and their corresponding esters. Honey is formed by fermentation during ripening. Generally speaking, the fragrance of honey is the same as that of flowers.

The colloidal substance of honey is a collection of large and small molecules that exist in liquid and are dispersed forever. They can neither precipitate nor be filtered by ordinary filter media. They are between true solution and suspension, and colloidal substances are composed of protein, pentosan and inorganic substances. They have a certain influence on the properties of honey, and may bubble, affecting the color and turbidity of honey. In addition, there are other active substances in honey, because they have special biological activities, that is, when these substances exist in honey, biological substances will react to them to a certain extent.

Pure and high-quality fresh ripe honey is a viscous, transparent or translucent colloidal liquid with sweet taste. Honey with strong fragrance and poor quality often has bitter taste, astringency, sour taste or peculiar smell, and it is easy to crystallize in different degrees when the temperature is below 10℃ or left for too long. Different types of honey sources have different physical properties, and their physical properties are the same:

(-) The color, fragrance and taste of honey are too high.

Honey from different honey sources has different colors, smells and tastes. The color of honey ranges from white to deep amber. For example, wild osmanthus honey, locust honey, litchi honey and Chinese milk vetch honey are white and light yellow, while buckwheat honey and eucalyptus honey are dark amber. The color of honey depends on the kind of pigment and the content of minerals. If the mineral content is high, especially the iron content, the color of honey will be dark. If the pollen content is high, it will also deepen the color of honey. Conversely, if the mineral content is low, the pollen content is not too much. This kind of honey is light in color, such as alfalfa honey, locust honey, wild osmanthus honey and honey, and its aromatic substances are mainly volatile essential oil and aromatic alcohol. Generally speaking, the fragrance of honey is the same as that of flowers. The taste of honey is mainly sweet, but some of it is bitter, and some of it also has the special smell of honey plants themselves-irritating or strong strange smell, such as mint honey has the spicy taste of mint and buckwheat honey has its unique strong smell.

The fragrance and delicacy of honey. It is especially easy to be destroyed by improper heating and storage methods, such as excessive heating or improper long-term storage, which destroys the original color and fragrance of honey, leading to the deepening of honey color, the decline of fragrance and the deterioration of taste. Excessive heating not only makes volatile fragrance enter the air, but also changes the taste of honey. However, due to the influence of high temperature, sugar, acid and protein in honey will bring unpleasant smell to honey.

Honey is a viscous liquid, and its specific gravity is usually measured by Baume hydrometer. The specific gravity of honey is related to water content, that is, to maturity. Immature honey, because of its high water content, has a small specific gravity, while the specific gravity of honey varies greatly with different water content. If honey is exposed to high humidity air, it will form a thin layer, and because of its high water content, its low specific gravity will remain in the upper layer, resulting in inconsistent specific gravity between the upper and lower layers. If two kinds of honey with different water contents are put in the same barrel, if they are not specially mixed, the one with high water content will be above the one with low water content. This is why honey is layered.

The hygroscopicity of honey is the ability of honey to absorb water from the air. The hygroscopicity of honey is closely related to its unique components-sugar and edible water. When the water content of honey is just in balance with the air relative humidity of 58%, the water content of honey is 17.4%. If this honey is exposed to air with a relative humidity higher than 58%, it will absorb water in the air, so its water content will increase, while when honey is exposed to air with a relative humidity lower than 58%, its water content will decrease. In short, there is a dynamic balance between the moisture content of honey exposed to the air and the humidity in the air. Honey absorbs the moisture in the air, rapidly dilutes from the surface layer, and slowly spreads to the deep layer. When honey is exposed to dry air, it will lose water, but the speed is slow, because a "dry film" is formed on the surface, and honey is in it.