About honey

Acacia honey is one of the most valuable sorts of honey. The name Acacia honey speaks of its origin. He is collected by bees from two species of acacia - white and yellow. Colour of honey depends from the type of acacia. So if Acacia honey is collected from the yellow acacia, it has a light yellow color, and honey, which is collected from white acacia, is almost colorless. Acacia honey has a delicate floral scent and mild flavor, it has no bitter taste, which is typical for other sorts of honey (such as buckwheat honey).

One of the distinguishing characteristics of Acacia honey - is its ability to stay in the liquid state for a long time, it begins to crystallize about a year after its collection.

The main gathering of Acacia honey areas in Ukraine are Kyiv, Cherkasy, Sumy region. Bees can collect clean Acacia honey without any additives thanks to huge planted acacia. This honey is picked in late May - early June, acacia blooms in this short period of time (7-15 days).

Due to the high content of fructose, Acacia honey is easily digested and is suitable for diabetic and baby food. Thanks to a number of properties it is called "childish" honey - it does not cause allergies, contains a large amount of carotene and enzymes that improve digestion.

Acacia honey has a number of different healing properties. Its antiseptic properties are used in the treatment of conjunctivitis and other eye diseases, and the treatment of eczema and neurodermatitis. In this case an external application of Acacia honey as aqueous solutions and ointments is used. If you eat Acacia honey regularly, it helps in lowering of blood pressure, it has a mild sedative effect and beneficial effects in psychiatric disorders and nervous breakdown. Acacia honey is recommended to use for insomnia at night. Also its healing properties are noted in various gastrointestinal diseases and diseases of the kidneys and liver.

It is one of the best sorts of honey. The source of this honey is nectar of meadow flowers (white, pink and red clover, dandelion, thyme, allseed white and yellow, luzern, sage, lady's bedstraw, woundwort and etc.). The colour of this honey is from light-yellow to brown (it depends from grosses from which bees take nectar).

It has nice taste and sweet smelling. Motley grasses honey is good general tonic mean, has positive influence on liver, heart, respiratory organs. It is good antiseptic if you have sick kidneys or external skin disease. It is used in allergic diseases. In response to wealth of different honey plants nectar, this type of honey is one of the most popular among buyers.

Linden (white) honey - is one of the most valuable sorts of honey. This honey is transparent, light yellow, light amber color, sometimes with a reddish tone, it has a wonderful aroma and incomparable beautiful, strong, intense flavor.

This honey is very sweet. Mint, balsamic, sometimes bitter and persistent flavor reminiscent of the smell of linden forests during flowering. White honey is produced by bees from the nectar of greenish-yellow flowers of linden, which is called the queen of beekeepers honey plant, due to the fact that it has high melliferous capacity.

Linden (white) honey is very valuable because of its exceptionally pleasant taste and beneficial properties. It is used mainly for colds, because the honey has increased diaphoretic action. Linden (white) honey is indispensable in the treatment of sore throats, colds, laryngitis, bronchitis, tracheitis, asthma. It provides good local effect in purulent wounds and burns. Linden (white) honey contains 36-37% glucose and 39-40% fructose, volatile and non-volatile antimicrobial substances. It has expectorant effect and slightly laxative effect. It is good as cardiotonic agent. Linden (white) honey is used in inflammation of gastrointestinal, renal and biliary diseases. Linden (white) honey is the best for human health and never palls. It is extracted in areas where linden forests or artificial plantations grow.

Sunflower honey is the sort of honey, which is very pleasant to taste in a liquid state, but, unfortunately, it crystallizes quickly. After crystallization it becomes golden, bright amber, sometimes with a greenish tone. It is characterized by a strong aroma and a pleasant, slightly harsh taste. The crystals are small, yellow or light amber color. They resemble melted butter.

Sunflower is an important honey plant. Bees collect nectar from golden yellow flowers of this oil plants. An inflorescence of sunflower contains about 1,500 flowers, which are cross-pollinated by bees. In such way the fruit-bearing capacity of sunflower is much increased. Sunflower honey is characterized by a high content of simple sugars (glucose and fructose) and low level of sucrose.

Among the sorts of honey with bright colour sunflower honey differs most enzymatic activity. It is recommended for treating heart disease, breathing passages and the gastrointestinal colic. Also sunflower honey is very useful for treatment atherosclerosis, osteochondrosis, neuralgia different. It good excretes and is often used as a diuretic.

Some buyers think that crystallized sunflower honey is more inferior in taste than other sorts of honey. But you should not jump to conclusions, one of the properties of sunflower honey is fast crystallization. In Ukraine sunflower honey is usually sold at a lower price than other sorts of honey, but the nutritional and medicinal properties of sunflower honey is not inferior to the properties of other sorts of honey. In the EU sunflower honey is one of the most expensive sorts.

Rape honey has white color with yellow and green tone, pleasant aroma and very sweet taste. Honey is very dense, it crystallizes quickly (even in hives). It bad dissolves in water. It may turn sour during long storage. Bees collect rape honey from nectar of yellow flowers of rape plant (brassica napus) - oil plant, which is famous by its aethereal oils. For one day bees can collect approximately 8 kg of this aromatic nectar. The taste of rape honey leaves light pleasant bitter taste, it has taste of mustard.

You should keep rape honey carefully - it has a feature to turn sour quickly. It dissolves bad in water and you should take into consideration this fact during creation of all kinds of medicinal compounds which are based on solutions of water and rape honey.

The European beekeepers call rape honey “alive” due to its strong treatment features. It is rape honey which fills market stalls of European supermarkets; it is in different items and with different names here. Spring and May rape honey becomes normative component of medicinal agent in Europe. Also it is used as one of the accessory food substances. In Poland rape honey is traditional medicine for treatment heart diseases. Dissolved in milk this honey helps a throat sore. There are more than 51% of glucose in rape honey, it has good influence on brainwork. Also rape honey is quickly ingested in intestinal tract and it is highly valued by some experts due to possibility of rape honey to deduce heavy metals from organism. If you eat warm rape honey it has good influence on liver and biliary tracts. As other sorts of honey rape honey is ministerial to skin regeneration and it can be used for burns treatment. There is high content of boracium in this sort of honey that helps to reproduce bone tissue and helps the activity of thyroid body.

The colour of buckwheat honey can be from dark-yellow to dark-brown with little red tone. In the last time dark sorts of honey become more popular and buckwheat honey is related to high-great honey with high treatment features. This growing popularity of dark sorts of honey is connected with the fact that there are more minerals in dark sorts of honey. The content of minerals in buckwheat honey is various; it includes:

- macroelements (kalium, natrium, calcium, magnesium, iron, phosphorus etc.); -microelements (aluminium, copper, manganese, lead, zinc etc.).

In addition to well-known useful features of honey buckwheat honey has blood-forming function, raises the level of hemoglobin in in blood, normalizes arterial tension, the work of kidneys and stomach. All these features of buckwheat honey is connected with the fact that the product, which is made by bees from nectar from flowers of buckwheat, is more enriched (in comparison with other sorts of honey) in iron and protein. In addition to blood-forming function buckwheat honey is well known as antiseptic, which is used for treatment of septic wound, furunculosis and another skin disease.

Buckwheat honey has acrid and spicy flavor and aroma. If you tasted it once, you cannot confuse it with some other sort of honey. This sort of honey “rasps” in throat.

Buckwheat honey crystallizes slowly (after 1 month of storage). During the process of crystallization it transfers in doughy mass, as usual it has large-grains. Very often buckwheat honey divides on dark liquid mass (on top) and light crystallized mass (below). It is the normal event.

You should store buckwheat honey (as another sorts of honey) in closed vessels, in dry, ventilated rooms, which doesn't freeze in winer. In the wet rooms honey can catch the moisture and acidify.