According to Dick Paetzke, in his poem, What is Honey (1987), "twenty-four hundred years ago, the prophet Isaiah said the Messiah would come eating honey so he might grow up knowing what was good," and, in 5500 BC, the Egyptians - by many accounts the first beekeepers in the history of beekeeping - were not only using the raw natural honey as a sweetener but also to dress the wounds of their soldiers.
Raw Natural Honey Make Up and Health Benefits
The book Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers, insists that raw natural honey must certainly be the oldest easily accessible natural sweetener in the world, a sentiment that is echoed across ancient mythologies and languages around the globe.
For early man, sweet stuff was not easy to come by, and raw natural honey presented an easily accessible, readily digestible, and fermentable sugar early on in history. But what is so important about it and how is it different than sugar?
Raw natural honey is, essentially, the nectar of flowers and plants that is gathered by the bee and stored in its stomach until it returns to the hive to regurgitate it. On a molecular level, nectar is basically sucrose. But the honeybee breaks the sucrose down into glucose and fructose and then deposits it into the wax cells of the comb inside the hive, adding nutrients to it in the process.
Something as yet unknown to science happens to the nectar as it is digested and redeposited in the hive. Depending on the kind of nectar the bee gathers, the raw natural honey it regurgitates may vary greatly in chemical composition. For instance, nectar gathered from heather plants characteristically produce a very protein-rich honey. And unlike a simple carbohydrate (table sugar), raw natural honey contains additional vitamins and minerals (in significant amounts). Although each honey varies slightly from the next, a basic chemical honey profile will contain the following:
- vitamins A, B, C, D, E, and K
- beta-carotene
- iron
- niacin
- magnesium
- potassium
- iodine
- sodium
- copper
- manganese
On top of that, raw natural honey also possess many beneficial live enzymes, as well as helpful and complex substances. According to the book, Bee Pollen, these complex substances contribute to the fact that raw natural honey is known to be antibiotic, antiviral, anti-inflammatory, anti-carcinogenic, anti-allergenic, anti-anemic, and tonic.
Honey Wine, Honey Beer, and the History of Mead
Raw natural honey health benefits are maintained as well in the production of honey wine, honey beer, and mead. There connection between man and the honey bee that goes back to ancient history, and a drink called mead (honey wine) has been recorded in traditions across the world as a favorite potable of both men and gods. Many tribes - perhaps most notably the Nordic - have often described mead as nectar from the heavens. And it is even said that in some tribal languages, that the word "bee" is closely linked to the phrase "Word of God."
Mead (honey wine, honey beer), at its most basic, is honey, water, and yeast. Often referred to as honey-wine, it differs traditionally from beer in that the primary bulk of its fermentable sugars come from raw natural honey and not grain. There are hundreds of types of meads across the world, though they all start with the same basic recipe.
From Plato to Emerson, the history of mead (honey wine) notes that it has been enjoyed for centuries, and, in fact, drinking mead and consuming raw natural honey has historically been noted in many texts to be linked to good health and longevity:
[Eat thee of honey] wherein is healing for mankind.
- the Koran
The History of Beekeeping and Honey Bee CCD
There is not doubt, then, that the history of beekeeping, and the relationship of man and honey bee, but these facts from The National Honey Board's website further reveal to us the amazing role of raw natural honey and the amazing little insect called the honey bee.
- It takes about two million flowers, give or take, to produce a pound of raw natural honey.
- One hive of bees can fly more than 55,000 miles to produce a single pound of raw natural honey.
- An adult worker bee can fly about 15 miles per hour.
- Honey is so rich in carbohydrates and other substances important to the honeybee that it only needs about one ounce (or two tablespoons) for enough energy to fly around the world.
- On average, each person in the U.S. consumes about 1.31 pounds of honey per year.
- Honey bees "communicate" by "dancing." They will do a dance to alert other bees where nectar and pollen is located, and they also communicate with pheromones, a unique odor common to the particular beehive.
- Honey bees have sophisticated memories, which allow them to make decisions in real time and space based on internal "maps" or their surrounding area.
- Honey bees are responsible for pollinating up to 80 percent of all insect-pollinated plants that are consumed by humans.
Sadly, honey bee CCD has recently been identified as causing honey bee colonies to inexplicably lose their workers. According to one government study, honey bee CCD has resulted in a loss of 50-90% of colonies in beekeeping operations across the United States. Pathogens and organism are currently being studied in an attempt to find the cause, but it seems the honey bee may need some additional help from his longtime partner.
The US State Department of Agriculture has been studying honey bee CCD for some time in in 2007 released a report on honey bee CCD. The results of the report, however, were inconclusive and the problem continues to be studied by scientists across the globe.
So, while it is true that no one really knows when man discovered honey, we would all do well to be thankful for the busy little insect who produces it and do all we can to help it out.
Jeremy Perkins - The author has a B.A in Journalism and Writing, an M.A. in Information Technology, and enjoys watercolor painting, sports, coding, hiking, ...
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