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Honey

SUMMARY

Honey is the natural sweet substance produced by honeybees from the nectar or secretions of plants, which the bees collect and transform by combining them with specific substances of their own. The bees subsequently deposit, dehydrate, store and leave the honey to ripen and mature in the honeycombs. The result is “blossom honey or nectar honey”. Bees can also produce honey from the excretion of plant-sucking insects; in this case the product is called “honeydew honey”.

HISTORY

For millennia, honey was the only natural sugary food available to ancient peoples, starting with the Hittites, from whom the term “melit” perhaps derives. A food that the Ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans considered extremely important for their well-being. Ayurvedic medicine was aware of its properties three thousand years ago, while the Ancient Egyptians were skilled beekeepers. Proof of this can be found in the bas-reliefs and wall paintings depicting men working with bees in numerous temples in the Nile valley. For the Egyptians honey wasn’t just a simple food, but the “food of the gods”. In Ancient Greece, Pythagoras suggested his followers eat honey because it would guarantee a long and healthy life, while the Romans imported large quantities of it from Cyprus, Spain and Malta. Like the Egyptians, the Ancient Romans used it many different ways: to sweeten food, to make honey wine (the famous hydromium), as a food preservative, and in numerous sweet and sour sauces. However, the most widespread use was for medicinal purposes, to cure, but also to prevent diseases. In the Middle Ages, Emperor Charlemagne forced every single peasant in his empire to raise bees: this is the moment in which human’s became beekeepers. With the discovery of the Americas, cane sugar arri