October 3rd, 2007

Honey is one of the oldest food sources we know. This fascinating fluid is created by honey bees from the nectar of flowers. Let’s see what sciensational stuff we have for honey and the great honey bees.



Thanks to sciensational reader Ashalaya from Racine in Wisconsin, USA, we found out a really interesting chemistry fact:

Honey does not spoil.

This is perhaps one of the greatest properties of honey. You could place it anywhere for thousands of years and it will not spoil. In fact, edible honey was found in ancient Egyptian Pharaoh King Tut’s tomb!

Honey contains large amounts of fructose and glucose. Naturally this makes it an ideal sweetener – much sweeter – almost 20 to 60 per cent more – than sugar itself!

You would think that such a sweet thing would be so bad for your health. Not so at all! Honey does not have any fats or cholesterol. It does not contain any sodium either. It is often said that we could actually live off a just-honey diet because it is considered to be the only kind of food that has all necessary substances to sustain a normal human life, though it would be quite boring to have nothing but honey, eh?

Let’s take a look at the wonderful source of honey – the fantastic creature called the Honey Bee. Sciensational reader Jieian tells us an amazing biology fact:



Honeybees have remained unchanged in form or structure for 20 million years .

Yup, now there’s one specie we could trust with almost anything that it does, couldn’t we? Surely they must know what they’re doing! And they’re not looking at retirement anytime soon either, because honey bees are not only one of the oldest species, they are also one of the most hardworking.

A honey bee could visit around 2000 flowers in a day, flying around 25 kilometers per hour! That’s not all. It would take about 2 million flowers for these little creatures to visit to make just half a kilogram of honey! Not only that, just one single honey bee colony can produce between 30 to 40 kilograms of honey in a year. Can anyone beat that?

So, let’s remember how much hard work goes into a single spoonful of honey that we so yummily use as part of our food.

Here’s a big Cheers to our friends, the honey bees!

