Honey, I'm Home!

It is sometimes asked what is sweeter than sugar, and the majority of people would probably answer "honey".....and that's what we'll be discussing today! In case you have been out of the loop, we have received some new products from a Brazilian company called Novo Mel who produces honey made from the rain forests of Brazil. With the varying plant life in their rain forests, many varieties of flowers bloom which in turn means various honeys can be extracted from these exotic plants. And the result of that are these:

The honey jars you see above (from left to right) come from the Orange Blossom, Cipo-Uva Blossom, Wildflower, Eucalyptus Blossom, and the Capixingui Blossom. But before we get into details about these let's go over some of the basics of this sweet substance, in general.


Honey is usually made up of glucose & fructose (monosaccharides; aka simple sugars) and water. It can get even more detailed with even more scientific terms, but we'll try to keep it short and sweet.





As mentioned at the beginning of the post, we asked "is honey sweeter than sugar?" Only slightly, would be the best answer. In terms of sweetness, fructose > sucrose & glucose > maltose. The majority of honeys have fructose as the dominant element which gives that slightly sweeter taste than sugar. It's rare for glucose to overtake fructose as the main component of honey, but there are honeys like that out there. Based on a dry weight basis, honey is on average sweeter than sugar and just as sweet as in its liquid form yet contains less carbohydrates.

Checking the color of the honey is a another way of getting a good idea of how strong the taste may be. A general rule of thumb is that the lighter colors have a milder taste while the darker ones have a bolder and stronger taste.

Now with all that information in mind, it should be a bit easier to understand Novo Mel's honey. This is a brief rundown of what to expect the honeys to be like:

• Orange Blossom 
• Slight citrus taste; delicate waxy aroma (Medium in color)
• Cipo-Uva (Grape Vine)
• Fruity taste w/ a good sweetness (Light in color)
• Wildflower
• Floral, pungent flavor (Dark in color)
• Eucalyptus
• Mildly sweet w/ slight floral flavor (Dark in color)
• Capixingui
• Mild sweetness w/ flowery flavors (Light in color)

Now why are we making such a big deal about honey? We have plenty here in the United States, right? Apparently thousands of bee colonies have been moved temporarily to California where they are being fed and medicated to build up their population in preparation for the almond pollination around this time of the year. There has been an ongoing decrease of how much honey is being produced in the United States because the bee population has been waning. Along with the decrease in production, demand has been growing and seems like it will continue to do so. So where would we get some good old fashioned naturally grown honey?

The above was describing what's happening in the United States in the world of honey. If we take a look at Brazil, Novo Mel's honey is a whole different story. The bees in Brazil do not have to be medicated or fed to keep their population strong as they are producing honey as natural as nature makes it. With the diverse environments of the Brazilian rain forest, there's even more varieties of honey to try out instead of the standard honey you see in your local store.

So now that we have a pretty good understanding of the honey in the jars, that leads us to...............

What in the world is this, you ask? This is a unique honey spray that consists of honey and propolis. 

...........Propolis? What's that?

Propolis is an all-natural material created by bees from tree buds, sap flow, or other plant-like sources. Its usage can be traced back in the days of Aristotle (around 350 B.C. for those who are rusty on their world history like myself). Propolis is thought to have great medical benefits in helping the immune system including helping sore throats and other mouth infections. It also is a great antioxidant & anti-flammatory agent. A few of the staff here had some terrible coughs which lasted for days that wouldn't go away. They decided to test out this product and its theory, and the results were being able to breath a lot easier.

Since it's in a spray form factor, it's very easy to use and works just like a breath spray. Now before you get all spray happy and start spraying every mouth you see, please note that this is not meant for those who are pregnant, breastfeeding, infants under 1 years old, and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any diseases.

There is one more topic we wanted to cover when it comes to honey, and that would be clarification of the crystallization of honey.  This phenomenon happens because of science.....yay. As mentioned earlier, honey is made of glucose, fructose, and water. These crystals will appear when glucose precipitates out of the honey which then loses the water contained in it thus taking a crystallized form. So does this make crystallized honey bad? Nope. In fact, some are crystallized on purpose to make what's called cremed honey (aka whipped honey/churned honey/honey fondant), similar to the left picture.

There are various causes that make this crystallization occur which I'll list neatly for you right below:

• Extraction from the warm hive causes honey to undergo crystallization, some faster than others
• Stimulation by particles like dust, pollen, propolis, and air bubbles present in the honey
• Storage conditions: temperature, relative humidity, and the type of container the honey is stored in; if you keep it in the fridge, it will crystallize faster

In short, the crystallization is just natural and a good sign that the honey you have is pure and natural without additives or other chemicals. At room temperature, the honey will begin to crystallize within weeks or months; rarely will it happen within days. For long term storage, it is recommended to use air-tight, moisture-resistant stainless steel drums (did somebody say fusti?).

Hopefully this article covered a lot of ground for those of you who did not know too much about honey, aside from knowing that a certain lovable silly old bear who has a rumbly in his tumbly loves this stuff. While we're at it, we might as well throw this little advert in since you should now be knowledgeable about our honey products:

If there's something we didn't cover that you want to know more about, don't forget to sound off in the comments below or even directly emailing/calling us. We'd love to hear feedback from you.....including comments about this adorable bee doodle:

Oh and by request from one of our staff, this little fellow on the left is the unofficial mascot for the month of March, since it represents spring and honey all in one go. Our talented artist wants to show this everywhere we can, so here it is.