Honey, a Truly Miraculous Natural Product

Honey, a Truly Miraculous Natural Product Honey bees, which are central to our lives, face possible extinction

BY MOHAMMAD ABDULLAH

The greatest gifts sometimes arrive in odd wrapping. I am thinking of honey, that nutritious, healthy and natural food produced by honeybees.

In fact, these tiny animals are critical to the continued functioning of our ecosystem, because they are the ones that pollinate so many of the plants that both animals and we eat. Researchers have also discovered other fascinating facts about them, such as their practice of physical distancing. One thing that we seldom think about, however, is how hard they work to extract nectar from flowers and transform it into honey.

Surat an-Nahl (The Chapter of the Bees), reveals that God inspired the bee, saying, “Build yourselves houses in the mountains and trees and what people construct. Then feed on all kinds of fruit and follow the ways made easy for you by your Lord. From their bellies comes a drink of different colors in which there is healing for people. There truly is a sign in this for those who think” (16:68-69).

Bees have lived in these places for millions of years. The numerous types of boxes used by beekeepers today are relatively recent inventions. The scientific study of bee colonies, which began in 18th-century Europe, gradually uncovered their amazingly complex yet purposeful and dedicated life. Dr. Ahmed Zaki Abu Shadi, a U.K.based Egyptian Romantic poet, publisher, physician, bacteriologist and bee scientist, is credited for patenting a removable honeycomb in 1919, the same year that he founded the Apis Club, an international organization of individual beekeepers and bee scientists (https://shodhganga.inflibnet. ac.in/jspui/bitstream/10603/206049/11/9. chapter%203.pdf).

Honeybees build their single-entrance hives by preparing its walls with a thin layer of propolis (“bee glue”). This antimicrobial substance is derived from the plant resins that worker bees collect, along with the nectar and pollen they need for food. Upon their return to the hive, other bees pull the sticky substance off their legs.

The plant resin is then mixed with saliva and wax, which they secrete by chewing it until it is soft, and then bond bits of it together to form individual hexagonal cells — the honeycomb. These cells are later used to store nectar, pollen, honey, eggs and larvae. Honey is stored in the uppermost cells, pollen in the rows below that and below those rows we find the workers’ brood cells. The queen’s cells are at the bottom. As the hive grows, the bees’ activities increase.

An average honey bee hive comprises one fertile queen, whose main activity is egg-laying; between 20,000 to 80,000 sterile female worker bees, which do almost everything that needs to be done; and between 300 to 800 fertile males, called drones. In addition, there are about 5,000 eggs and the brood, about 25,000 to 30,000 immature bees in various stages of development. Of these, some 10,000 newly hatched are the larvae, while the remainder are pupae sealed into their cells by the workers to mature.

All the larvae are fed during their first three days of life with “royal jelly.” After that, worker and drone larvae are fed a mixed food composed of honey and pollen, while the larvae destined to develop into queens are fed royal jelly during their whole fiveday larval life.

A honeybee’s brain is about the size of a sesame seed, and yet it has a remarkable capacity to learn and remember. They may travel up to 3 miles in search of nectar and return to the same hive. They communicate through a “waggle dance,” which provides directions to other bees about a nectar/ pollen source (http://www.fao.org/3/t0104e/ t0104e05.htm).

Honey originates from the thousands of flowers and trees that honeybees visit during the spring, summer and fall. They suck, collect and store the flowers’ nectar in their special stomach, where enzymes help convert it to honey. Once the honey sac is full, they return to the hive and regurgitate it into the honeycomb’s cells. Non-foraging bees then transform the nectar into honey by manipulating it many times with their mouthparts, reallocation and evaporation. After using their wings to evaporate the liquid from the nectar, the bees seal off the mature honey-containing cells with a lid of wax.

As one honeybee produces about onetwelfth of a teaspoon of honey during her lifetime, a 16-ounce jar of honey represents the efforts of tens of thousands of bees flying

a total of 112,000 miles or so to forage nectar from about 4.5 million flowers. They flap their wings over 11,000 times per minute, which requires a great deal of energy. Producing and then storing their own honey helps guarantee their self-sufficiency throughout the year, especially during the winter and droughts. Although honeybees produce more than they need, beekeepers must remove only the excess honey.

Aside from the definition found in “Codex Alimentarius,” there are additional definitions in the regulations of many countries and various types of honey for sale in the market. The USDA publishes a grading system that provides general standards. U.S. Grade A is the highest quality of extracted honey.

Honey is classified by the source from which the bees gathered the nectar, because the source influences its flavor (mild to distinctively bold), color (nearly colorless to dark brown) and viscosity. Pure honey can be kept for a long time — provided it is tightly sealed — as it neither spoils nor molds and doesn’t require refrigeration. In addition to being a sweetener, it also contains several minerals, enzymes, vitamins and proteins that provide unique nutritional and medicinal benefits.

Most of the honey found in grocery stores is processed and pasteurized, and thus clear, in comparison to the raw unfiltered, unpasteurized honey, which contains bee pollen and propolis and is loaded with important health benefits. Its medicinal benefits include fighting infections and coughing, being a natural energy source and a powerful antioxidant, promoting restorative sleep and healing wounds. Because of its high nutritional value and unique flavor, natural honey is rather expensive. New Zealand’s Manuka honey and Yemen’s Sidr honey are considered among the best.

However, authenticating claims through traceability is limited to the quality of each processor’s documentation. Existing international official testing methods have limitations and need to be further improved and enforced. Also the European Commission is encouraging the development of harmonized analytical methods to enable the verification of compliance with the quality specifications for different types of honeys (Vlasta Pilizota, Ph.D., and Nela Nedic Tiban, Ph.D., “Advances in Honey Adulteration Detection,” Aug./Sept. 2009, https://www.foodsafetymagazine.com).

AS ONE HONEYBEE PRODUCES ABOUT ONETWELFTH OF A TEASPOON OF HONEY DURING HER LIFETIME, A 16-OUNCE JAR OF HONEY REPRESENTS THE EFFORTS OF TENS OF THOUSANDS OF BEES FLYING A TOTAL OF 112,000 MILES OR SO TO FORAGE NECTAR FROM ABOUT 4.5 MILLION FLOWERS.

Adulterated honey has become a serious economic and regulatory problem for, among other reasons, honey is becoming expensive to produce and a source of potentially big profits. Methods of adulteration include dilution with cheaper sweeteners (e.g., corn syrup, sugarcane syrup, wheat syrup and rice syrup); harvesting immature honey, which is further dehydrated; and artificial feeding of bees during a nectar flow.

According to the U.S. Pharmacopeia’s Food FraudDatabase (https://decernis.com/ solutions/food-fraud-database), honey is the third “favorite” food target for adulteration, behind milk and olive oil. Another report states that more than three-fourths of the “honey” sold in U.S. grocery stores isn’t exactly what the bees produce, for the pollen frequently has been filtered out (https:// www.vice.com/en_us/article/884kq4/yourfancy-honey-might-not-actually-be-honey; March 6, 2020).

Honeybee colonies have declined due to multiple factors, including pesticides. During January 2019, the International Federation of Beekeepers’ Associations stated, “As long as honey fraud, customs fraud, and the violation of national and international trade laws persist, the wellbeing and stability of beekeepers around the world remains in jeopardy.” (https://www.apimondia.com/docs/apimondia_statement_on_honey_fraud_v_2.pdf).

Climate change has emerged as an additional threat. In fact, new research confirms that if Earth continues to warm and bees don’t find a way to adapt, they might go extinct (Lisa Spear, “Could Climate Change Lead to The Extinction of Bees?” Newsweek, June 28, 2018). Imagine what the coastal cities would look like if the current warming trend continues and how our planet’s 7 billion+ population would sustain itself if we lose all of the plants that bees pollinate.

Julio Jacobo, reporting for ABC News on July 9, 2019, stated that bee populations nationwide have been declining due to exposure to insecticide and fungicide, disease and mites, ultimately causing colonies to collapse. From April 2018 to April 2019, beekeepers in the U.S. lost over 40% of their hives. For instance, Jon Cooksey, writer and director of “How to Boil a Frog” (a 2010 Canadian eco-comedy documentary), said, “In the last four years, the chemical industry has spent $11.2 million on a PR initiative to say it’s not their fault, so we know whose fault it is.”

Something so important for our own survival should not be taken for granted. We should do whatever it takes to protect these precious creatures, who provide humanity with so many benefits. ih

Dr. Mohammad Abdullah retired after serving for 29 years with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (USDA, FSIS), which regulates the meat industry. He is the author of “A Closer Look at Halal Meat from Farm to Fork” (2016), which is available at Amazon.com.

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