About Honey & Bees
At Pure Sweet Honey, we know that high-quality honey adds immense value and many health benefits to foods, drinks, and other goods across dozens of industries. If you’re looking to enhance your products, keep reading to learn more about our 100% pure honey.
BACKGROUND about honey
Honey is one of nature’s most wholesome foods. Pure Honey is produced strictly by honeybees gathering nectar produced by flowering plants. Bees fly countless miles to gather nectar, fly it back to the hive, and transform it into honey. A full-strength beehive of 40,000 or more bees will produce a surplus of about 80 lbs per year. There will be next to nothing in some years, and other times perhaps 150-200 lbs.
The properties of honey are primarily determined by those of the nectar it originates from. Neither the bees nor the honey processor adds color or flavor to the honey, those properties come from the nectar. The bees only invert the sugar in the nectar and dry it down to a thickness that will allow it to keep without fermenting. In general, darker honey has a stronger, fuller flavor and light-colored honey is milder in flavor.
Nothing is added to honey, you buy it just as it is when extracted from the honeycomb. That’s why you can buy honey of different floral origins, like clover, orange blossom, wildflower, tupelo or buckwheat. The list is nearly endless, though not very many are available separately. In food applications, honey has some very useful properties, like giving natural color, sweetness or helping baked goods retain moisture and freshness.
- Contains a variety of nutrients
- Rich in antioxidants
- Better for blood sugar levels than regular sugar
- May improve heart health
- Promotes burn and wound healing
- May help suppress coughing in children
- Easy to add to your diet
- Honey is a natural product formed from nectar of flowers by honeybees (Apis mellifera; Family: Apidae).
- Honey has been used by humans since ancient times, nearly 5500 years ago.
- Most ancient population, including the Greeks, Chinese, Egyptians, Romans, Mayans, and Babylonians, consumed honey both for nutritional aims and for its medicinal properties.
- Honey is the only insect-derived natural product, and it has nutritional, cosmetic, therapeutic, and industrial values.
- Today, approximately 300 types of honey have been recognized. These varieties are related to the different types of nectar that are collected by the honeybees. coughing in children
[1] Ld, S. S. M. R. (2023, May 15). Everything to know about the Health Benefits of Honey. Healthline. https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/benefits-of-honey
[2] Samarghandian, S., Mehrpour, O., & Samini, F. (2017). Honey and Health: A Review of Recent Clinical Research. PubMed, 9(2), 121–127. https://doi.org/10.4103/0974-8490.204647
ABOUT honey bees
Honey bees are essential to maintaining biodiversity, ensuring the reproduction of plants, and supporting agricultural systems in the United States and internationally. Sure, we could survive without these bees, but our diet would be pretty bland. Honey bees’ pollination is responsible for over 35% of the foods we eat, including apples, cashews, cucumbers, peaches, watermelon, and many more of our favorite produce.
As bees move from flower to flower in search of food, they inadvertently transfer pollen between the flowers. This transfer ensures the reproduction of many of these plants, which, in turn, promotes a diverse ecosystem. Honey bees aren’t the only pollinators that lead to reproduction, but they have several unique traits that allow them to be especially effective at their job. Their bodies, equipped with hair and “pollen baskets” on their legs, allow them to easily collect and transfer pollen. They can also be moved in large numbers from crop to crop or plant to plant by trained beekeepers. These large groups allow for increased biodiversity and the best “bang for your buck” for farmers. In addition, honey bees tend to forage on and pollinate many types of crops, flowers, and plants, allowing them to be versatile pollinators for many different ecosystems.
- Responsible for > 35% of the food we eat
- Pollinate 80% of all flower plants
- Responsible for the pollination of crops across all 50 states in the U.S.
- Pollinate crops in 6 continents (excluding Antarctica)
- Play an essential role in the production of 90 different crops
- 1,152 bees
- 90,000 miles of flight [2]
- 4.5 million flowers pollinated
[1] National Honey Board. Honey Bees Keep the Food World Buzzing Pollination Infographic. https://honey.com
[2] Fun facts. American Bee Journal. (2016, February 29). https://americanbeejournal.com.