It is of no surprise that bee honey is highly beneficial to humans. People have a ton of catching up to do regarding the wholesome subtlety of honey. From body detox to boosting the immune strength, the benefits of this sweet stuff are more than providing simple nourishment to the body. No wonder, as humans know a lot about honey, bees also do.
Honey bees are not only the producers of honey; they are the consumers also. It is well known that if different varieties of honey are offered to a sick bee, it will always pick the honey variety that best fights off its infection. Numerous researches have revealed that honey is loaded with plant chemicals that influence bee health greatly. In addition, the nutritional components available in bee honey work well in boosting their tolerance to harsh conditions such as intense cold, heightening their ability to fight off infections and heal wounds.
Honey tastes delectable whether spread on toast, stirred into tea, or eaten directly from the jar. But in actuality, it is more than just a sweetener. The viscous liquid is generally sugar, which hive individuals use for food; however, it also harbors chemicals, nutrients, minerals, and natural particles that provide every honey its originality and give many medical advantages to honey bees.
Numerous insects can produce the best organic honey – bumblebees, stingless honey bees, even honey wasps – but only honey bees produce the most significant amount of honey, making it available for human consumption. This capacity didn’t occur out of the blue; it was a long period taking shape.
Honey bees made the split from wasps around 120 million years ago, during a surge in the advancement and spread of blossoming plants. This botanical variety – alongside a change in honey bee behavior of feeding pollen, rather than insects, to honey bee hatchlings – spurred the advancement of the roughly 20,000 honey bee species known today.
Turning into a specialist honey-creator took a couple of more social and chemical tricks. First, honey bees began adding a bit of nectar to the pollen, which shaped it into more movable groups. They also created wax secretion glands, which controlled the liquid nectar and strong pollen particles independently.
The wax allows for very flexible building material while forming a honeycomb. Bees then molded the wax into a hexagonal shape, which turns out to be the most proficient shape to store nectar. The hexagonal small and uniform cells assist in faster evaporation of water in addition to less microbial growth.
After this, the honey bee stores the nectar in her crop, or honey stomach, which mixes with various enzymes. After getting back to the hive, the honey bee then spews the payload to the first assembly line of bees. The following mouth-to-mouth passage brings down the water content and presents more catalysts.
The honey bees next store the mixture into a hive cell, then, at that point, dissipate more water by fanning their wings. Finally, another compound goes to work – glucose oxidase – which changes over a portion of the glucose into gluconic acid that will safeguard the honey.
At long last, the cell is fit to be covered with wax. Then, nurse honey bees will feed the processed honey to different members of the hive, and the rest of the honey is put away for cold days.
Honey: The Sweet Medicine
Nectar is infused with phytochemicals: the plant chemicals that prevent pests and assist with plant growth and metabolism. Later in various researchers, it was found that honey bees who were fed sugar water mixed with two honey phytochemicals – p-coumaric acid and the potent antioxidant quercetin – fought- off pesticides better than ones that just got the sugar water.
Apart from this, there are several additional benefits of phytochemicals in honey. Abscisic acid works well in boosting bees’ immune response, improves wound-healing time and tolerance to cold temperatures. Also, phytochemicals blunt the impact of parasites that are the significant causes of honey bee decline. Some phytochemicals are also known to enhance the activity of genes related to detoxification and immunity.
Despite consuming this healthiest natural sweetener, bees are still facing a rapid decline in their population. So while there is some honey always left by the beekeepers in the hive, a variety of honey will work effectively.
Mr. Basem Barry, founder & CEO of Geohoney, says that honey bees can only build up their pharmacy if they find a diverse & massive number of flowers growing all season. Improving floral diversity is essential for making the bees healthy. Better honey bee nutrition will not take care of the relative multitude of issues honey bees face. However, ensuring that honey bees approach their medication might help. Thus, it is suggested that the beekeepers leave diverse honey varieties in the hive, providing bees a pharmacy to keep themselves healthy and illness-free all year long.