When buying honey, everyone pays attention to its consistency. Sellers claim that buyers are more willing to take a beautiful, liquid elixir, and pay much less attention to the candied one. But a month passes, then another, and the product is still the same. Why is honey liquid and is there a catch? Let's figure it out together.

Should honey remain liquid like water and not thicken?

Natural, without additives, it is necessarily sugared, the only difference is when. But there are well-known exceptions, for example, acacia. Pure acacia may not thicken for years, of course, with proper storage. This is what experienced beekeepers say. Liquid honey, if natural, will stay that way for at least a month or two and then may begin to thicken.

It is known that the density of a substance is determined by the glucose in its composition. In fact, the more glucose, the higher the chances of rapid crystallization. If the substance is a record holder for the presence of fructose, and not glucose, it will take a long time to wait for thickening. “Fructose” champions among honey varieties are acacia and fireweed.

What are the reasons for this process?

Why is honey liquid like water? What is the reason for this? First of all, the option of falsification cannot be discarded. It's a shame, but it's a fact - some unscrupulous sellers deliberately dilute the candied so that it becomes liquid again. Moreover, such heating certainly does not benefit the product. How to distinguish liquid from adulterated or diluted?

A high-quality mass should smell, not of flowers, but of honey, wax, honeycomb. If you have been to an apiary at least once in your entire life, you will not confuse this smell with anything else. And there are exceptions here - honey from Ivan tea. However, it is quite rare to find it in its pure form in the markets, and not everyone is familiar with this aroma. If the liquid flows from the spoon like water, splashes, and the stream is interrupted too quickly, look for another seller. Such a product is diluted with syrup, and is also immature.

By purchasing an unripe variety, you risk becoming the owner of a fermented product that will either acquire a sour taste or foam. But you shouldn’t blame all liquid types of honey either. A rarefied state for the time being is the norm for the results of bee work. Perhaps it also has to do with how the mass is stored at home. An even temperature, without changes in cold, allows honey to maintain its normal state.

Is it possible to influence the crystallization of honey?

If you really want to keep the liquid state longer, the jars can be placed at a uniform temperature. Under no circumstances should you place them in the cold or on the balcony in winter, then you won’t have to ask “why.” Crystallization can be either slowed down or accelerated.

Let's say you like to eat a candied product, but your purchase is like water. It is necessary to try to thicken the substance. This can be done using several techniques:

• refrigerate for a long time (a couple of months);
• change the storage temperature for a short time (for two weeks);
• expose to light (it is not recommended to experiment, ultraviolet negates all qualities);
• mix in the jar and leave (quick setting is guaranteed).

If crystallization does not occur, there are few options: either the storage is so comfortable that the product will not harden very soon without stirring, or you are faced with a counterfeit. Only natural mass with a high glucose content, stored at room temperature without stirring, may not thicken for a long time.

Video “How to choose high quality honey”

An educational video about the right choice of a quality product - how to choose and what to pay attention to.

Liquid honey in winter is not at all an indicator of its freshness. This is the consistency of a counterfeit product or one that has been specially heated to give it a more attractive presentation. Experienced beekeepers will immediately recognize a fake by its appearance and will explain why honey is candied and how this affects its properties.

Causes of crystallization

All supersaturated solutions, which include a tasty beekeeping product, are unable to be stored in a homogeneous state for a long time. According to the laws of physics, excess matter tends to precipitate. As a result, the water balance is restored and the solution becomes saturated.

If we talk about honey, then glucose turns out to be superfluous, as the least soluble substance. And it is this that causes the appearance of white flaky crystals.

The time during which honey crystallizes depends on the ratio of glucose and fructose. The more content of the first and less of the second, the faster this will happen. If fructose predominates, then the tasty and healthy product will remain liquid for a long time and will not become sugary.

The following factors can affect the rate of crystallization:

• storage temperature;
• pre-treatment before packaging;
• air humidity;
• degree of maturity.

The most favorable temperature at which crystallization of glucose occurs is 15 0 C. When its value is below 4 0 C and above 27 0 C, this process is suspended until more favorable conditions occur.

If honey quickly becomes sugary, this may indicate a high content of pollen and other solid impurities in it. Crystallization is possible in the presence of centers around which glucose is concentrated. The product purified during processing remains liquid for a long time.

If the water content in honey is high due to its immaturity or absorption of excess moisture from the air, the sugaring process slows down. This is explained by the fact that the number of free water molecules increases and the degree of supersaturation of the solution with sugars decreases.

Advice! You can tell whether the product you are looking at is natural by its consistency. Rub a piece of it between your fingers - the artificial one will roll into lumps, but the real one will melt and be absorbed into the skin.

How does crystallization affect properties and shelf life?

So, we found out how and why honey is candied. How does this process affect its properties?

Honey does not lose its healing qualities after crystallization. It is still as useful as a freshly pumped one. However, you should not store it for a long time. The fresher the product, the more benefits it will bring.

The degree of crystallization also does not in any way affect the shelf life of a healthy and tasty product. On the contrary, the harder it is, the less likely it is that it will ferment and spoil. Candied honey is less susceptible to contamination and exposure to light and air.

Interesting fact! Hard rock honey can be broken off and eaten in pieces. When storing it, simply wrap it in something and put it in a cool, dark place.

Does honey have to thicken?

The question of whether honey should crystallize can be answered in one word - definitely! Regardless of the type, storage conditions and all other factors, real natural honey will sooner or later change its structure and become candied. This can happen a week after collection, or after a couple of years. Only an artificial product can remain liquid after 3 years of storage, thereby signaling its unnatural nature.

Sometimes, after a very short time, the sweet purchase turns into a lump of granular substance, similar to melted lard. In this case, a completely logical question arises: Should fresh, just purchased honey be candied? If this happens, then don't worry. Perhaps you purchased an early ripening variety, or the storage temperature was most favorable for this process.

Why is fresh, recently pumped honey candied if all storage conditions are met? The reason for this may be the following factors:

• the presence of pollen and mechanical impurities;
• variety with high glucose content;
• adding old product that has already thickened.

To build a crystalline structure, sugars need a fulcrum - a center. They become solid particles of pollen and other substances that got into the honey during pumping, as well as already formed crystals of old honey.

Advice! You can preserve the liquid structure of a delicious delicacy with the help of some simple manipulations. The honey is kept for 5 weeks at zero temperature. Then the jar with the product is transferred to a permanent storage place, where the temperature is maintained within 14 0 C.

How long should it take for it to thicken?

When should honey be candied? There is no exact answer to this question. This depends on numerous factors influencing the crystallization process. This includes the variety of the product and storage conditions.

Quickly thickening varieties of honey are buckwheat, rapeseed and sunflower. They become candied within 2-3 weeks. after pumping.

Interesting fact! The champion for long-term preservation in liquid form is acacia honey. It can maintain its fluidity for up to 2 years. This explains its great popularity among the population.

The following varieties are also quickly candied:

• lime
• buckwheat
• melilot.

They thicken slowly and do not crystallize for a long time:

• honeydew
• clover
• heather
• chestnut.

An interesting interview about whether real honey is candied can be seen in this video:

All materials on the website are presented for informational purposes only. Before using any product, consultation with a doctor is MANDATORY!

The liquid consistency of honey does not always mean that it is natural and fresh. If in the middle of winter you are offered to purchase a liquid product, then at best it is honey, pre-heated to give it a marketable appearance, and at worst it is counterfeit, made from something unknown. Although there are exceptions to this rule: certain varieties can retain a liquid consistency for a long time without losing their beneficial properties.

Experienced beekeepers know when real honey should be candied, and therefore can easily identify fake honey.

Conditions for candiing natural honey

The natural sweet substance is candied from two weeks to two months, with rare exceptions. The product consists of 90% fructose and glucose, the ratio of which determines the speed of its sugaring - if glucose predominates in the composition, honey becomes solid very quickly, and if the fructose content is increased, then the sweet substance can maintain a liquid consistency for a year or even more .

In addition, the rate of crystallization may depend on the influence of certain external factors:

• product storage temperature;
• processing before packaging;
• air humidity;
• degree of maturity.

As a rule, it begins to crystallize at temperatures from 4 to 27 degrees Celsius (optimal - 15 degrees). If the temperature falls below or above these limits, sugaring is suspended until favorable conditions occur.

Too rapid crystallization may be an indicator of an increased content of pollen and solid impurities in the product. A high concentration of liquid due to immaturity or absorption of excessive amounts of moisture from the air, on the contrary, slows down the crystallization process.

There is one simple way to distinguish a natural product from a counterfeit: you need to rub a small drop of it between your fingers. The real product applies evenly, melts and is absorbed into the skin, while the fake product rolls up in lumps.

Product properties and reasons for crystallization

The crystallization process does not affect the healing properties of the sweet mass at all - it remains as healthy as fresh. Sugaring does not affect the shelf life in any way - on the contrary, the harder the product, the less likely it is that it will spoil, since crystallized honey is much less exposed to air and light.

Regardless of the variety and storage conditions, any real honey sooner or later changes its structure and crystallizes. If the sweet mass remains liquid for three or more years, it is probably a fake.

So, a natural product must be candied during storage. But sometimes it happens that a sweet substance, purchased just the other day, begins to show a tendency to crystallize. Noticing this process, the buyer begins to worry, wondering if he really purchased a real and fresh product.

If recently purchased honey has begun to crystallize, there is no need to worry too much about this - perhaps it is a variety with a high glucose content, or its storage temperature was favorable for the sugaring process. However, rapid sugaring can also mean that an old product that has already thickened has been added to a fresh, recently pumped out product.

It is impossible to give a definite answer to the question of when honey should be candied, since the rate of crystallization is associated with numerous factors - in particular, storage temperature and variety. Buckwheat, rapeseed and sunflower thicken the fastest, while acacia, heather and chestnut thicken the slowest.

Why doesn't honey crystallize?

Varieties in which glucose predominates tend to remain liquid for a very long time. This is a natural condition and should not cause concern. However, it also happens that the sweet mass loses its ability to be candied due to external intervention.

I'll start with the background

I, like many ordinary buyers, have never thought about what natural honey should be like? And I’ve never been a big fan of this product to know how to distinguish natural honey from a fake. I just went out of necessity, I note, very rarely, to a store selling beekeeping products, and bought everything that was offered to me. And what was offered, as usual, was pre-poured into jars, frozen, solid honey from the shelf. In this regard, I, like many people, have a stereotype about the quality of honey. In winter, honey should crystallize and become thick. And the offer to buy liquid honey scared me.

My friends helped me break this stereotype. Which one year, all summer, stood in the meadows, collecting pure meadow honey. Once again, having pumped out the honey and brought it home from the apiary, they treated me to this natural creation of nature, pouring a liter jar of light yellow, very tasty-smelling honey.

At home, this liter jar of honey was empty in almost three days. Everyone fell in love with liquid, without any grains, fragrant, natural honey.
When they brought honey from the meadows again. I was one of the first to stand near their car with a three-liter jar, waiting for the precious product to be poured. I didn’t know how to distinguish natural honey at that time, so I completely trusted the beekeepers.
Since there were few friends in the apiary, they were not able to collect much honey. And he quickly sold out. I had no chance to buy it, and we were forced to save money, such a tasty and healthy delicacy.

Thus, the honey purchased in July safely survived in a liquid state until the New Year, when it was solemnly eaten with tea.
This mesmerizingly delicious honey, incomparable to any other honey I have eaten, gave me the idea to try it myself.

Honey and flowers

I won’t tell you how my more experienced friend and I cared for the bees and extracted honey. These are completely different stories that are instructive in many ways for novice beekeepers. But I will say one thing, I spent the summer with an apiary, in the water meadows, where all summer, which I had not noticed before, flowers bloomed, different at each time.

At first, some predominated in color, others faded, others began to predominate and bloom, and accordingly, the honey after each pumping was different in color and taste. The first bribe of honey that I pumped out was almost black, but very tasty with the smell of rose hips, there were a lot of thickets of which in that place, and it bloomed actively, probably for two weeks. I will assume that most of the nectar in the first bribe was collected by the bees from it.

By the way, this first and incredibly fragrant, delicious honey froze in almost two weeks.

The next bribe brought, very liquid, light yellow honey with a little greenery. The next two batches were clear, dark brown, slightly thicker, tart with a hint of bitterness.
The last honey I pumped out was cloudy and bright yellow.

Liquid honey

I immediately sold the first honey and distributed it to friends and acquaintances. The second one also left quickly. Therefore, I can’t say anything about its quality. But I still have the rest of the honey, but I think it won’t be for long, and it will also be taken away before spring. By the way, it’s already the end of December, and there is still no hint that the honey is thickening.

Honey storage

I store honey in food grade buckets, at home, at an average temperature of plus twenty-four degrees. The bright yellow has thickened a bit, but it still pours easily and has not yet become hard.

I assume that the majority of beekeepers still strive for profit and the sale of the honey they collect, and when answering the questions of ordinary people on how to distinguish natural honey, they are a little disingenuous, saying that real honey should thicken and become hard by winter, on its own. Experience has convinced me that this is not true.

It all depends on the flowers from which the nectar was collected and the conditions in which the honey was stored.
I know that professional beekeepers take the main honey from cultivated plants, buckwheat, sunflower, at least in our region, and as you know, it hardens within a month. But still, the most natural honey, as I think, if properly stored, should not thicken until warm spring days, otherwise how can a bee, exhausted by wintering and lack of water, gnaw on frozen, thick honey?

I wrote the article at the end of December, and was not yet one hundred percent sure of the correctness of my opinion.

Preparing for the new season

And here is the result of rebuilding the hives after wintering the bees. Today is April 14th, and these are the whiskers left in the hive from last year. Unfortunately, almost eaten by my household.

As we see, the honey flows in them, and is not frozen at all, as some beekeepers claim.

And the main photo also shows a photograph of a saucer with honeycombs against the backdrop of blossoming tree leaves. The photo was taken by the wife to prove that the honey in the honeycombs did not crystallize.

Conclusion

In order not to doubt the quality of honey, you need to have your own apiary, or take honey from those people whom you trust and do not doubt their honesty.

Crystallization of honey (popularly “sugarification”) is a natural process in which the product changes its consistency from liquid to thicker. The speed of this transformation depends on several factors: the composition of the variety, storage conditions, maturity, etc.

Why does honey crystallize (sugarize)? This happens due to the property of glucose to form crystals: as they settle, they make the product harder. Some varieties have a fine-grained consistency - the crystals are smaller in size, and the consistency is more viscous. This honey can be stirred with a spoon. Other varieties have a coarse-grained structure - they harden much more strongly, and can even be cut into pieces with a knife.

How does crystallization affect taste and properties? As a result of the natural process, the chemical composition of candied honey does not change in any way. Accordingly, its beneficial properties remain the same. As for the taste, it may acquire additional sweetness - but only because the crystals have become larger and feel better on the tongue.

Natural, without additives, it is necessarily sugared, the only difference is when. But there are well-known exceptions, for example, acacia. Pure acacia may not thicken for years, of course, with proper storage. This is what experienced beekeepers say. Liquid honey, if natural, will stay that way for at least a month or two and then may begin to thicken.

It is known that the density of a substance is determined by the glucose in its composition. In fact, the more glucose, the higher the chances of rapid crystallization. If the substance is a record holder for the presence of fructose, and not glucose, it will take a long time to wait for thickening. “Fructose” champions among honey varieties are acacia and fireweed.

What are the reasons for this process?

Why is honey liquid like water? What is the reason for this? First of all, the option of falsification cannot be discarded. It's a shame, but it's a fact - some unscrupulous sellers deliberately dilute honey or heat candied honey so that it becomes liquid again. Moreover, such heating certainly does not benefit the product. How to distinguish real liquid honey from adulterated or diluted honey?

A high-quality mass should smell, not of flowers, but of honey, wax, honeycomb. If you have been to an apiary at least once in your entire life, you will not confuse this smell with anything else. And there are exceptions here - honey from Ivan tea.

However, it is quite rare to find it in its pure form in the markets, and not everyone is familiar with this aroma. If the liquid flows from the spoon like water, splashes, and the stream is interrupted too quickly, look for another seller.

Such a product is diluted with syrup, and is also immature.

By purchasing an unripe variety, you risk becoming the owner of a fermented product that will either acquire a sour taste or foam. But you shouldn’t blame all liquid types of honey either.

A rarefied state for the time being is the norm for the results of bee work. Perhaps it also has to do with how the mass is stored at home.

An even temperature, without changes in cold, allows honey to maintain its normal state.

Is it possible to influence the crystallization of honey?

If you really want to keep the liquid state longer, the jars can be placed at a uniform temperature. Under no circumstances should you place them in the cold or on the balcony in winter, then you won’t have to ask “why the honey doesn’t thicken.” Crystallization can be either slowed down or accelerated.

Let's say you like to eat a candied product, but your purchase is like water. It is necessary to try to thicken the substance. This can be done using several techniques:

• refrigerate for a long time (a couple of months);
• change the storage temperature for a short time (for two weeks);
• expose to light (it is not recommended to experiment, ultraviolet negates all qualities);
• mix in the jar and leave (quick setting is guaranteed).

If crystallization does not occur, there are few options: either the storage is so comfortable that the product will not harden very soon without stirring, or you are faced with a counterfeit. Only natural mass with a high glucose content, stored at room temperature without stirring, may not thicken for a long time.

An educational video about the right choice of a quality product - how to choose and what to pay attention to.

The healing properties of candied honey are in no way inferior to liquid honey. Moreover, if you purchased honey and it does not become candied after a while, this is confirmation that you purchased a low-quality product.

As for the taste, I can say that I prefer liquid honey. But candied honey is sweeter, so it is convenient to mix it with other products and take it.

Honey is a rather unique product; it can be taken not only internally, but also externally. Its benefits for humans are known even to small children, whose mothers add honey to their tea. If our favorite delicacy is of high quality, then consuming it will bring a lot of benefits to your body. And its sugariness will not be a problem. To prove this to you, I want to draw your attention to the composition of honey.

Composition of candied honey

There are 3 main types of sugar in honey:

1. fructose;
2. glucose;
3. sucrose.

Fructose gives this beekeeping product its sweetness. Most often it happens that honey contains a large amount of glucose. That’s when it turns out that the honey begins to become sugary. But all the beneficial substances remain in honey, it just changes into a different consistency. And its properties remain the same.

But there is one big problem: at high temperatures, the lion's share of the healing properties is lost. That is why it is better to drink honey with tea (or other liquid) rather than dissolve it in hot water.

If you suddenly want to melt honey, there are many ways to do it. You can read the article - how to make candied honey liquid.

Candied honey - benefits for skin

You can make excellent masks and scrubs at home using candied honey. This consistency is considered the best for cosmetic purposes. After such scrubs, your skin will become softer and smoother.

Here is one of the most popular recipes for facial scrubs:

Recipe: Take 2 small strawberries, 3 tsp. oatmeal and 2 tsp. honey The berries need to be washed and crushed to a paste. Using a coffee grinder, grind the oatmeal and add honey to it. After that, mix all the ingredients and the scrub with honey at home is ready.

Application: Wash your face thoroughly and apply the resulting mixture in a circular motion. Massage this way for 3 minutes. Let the scrub remain on your face for about 15-20 minutes and you can wash your face with warm water. And then you can apply your favorite cream to consolidate the effect.

Why honey is not candied for a year. Why does honey take a long time to crystallize?

​Why is honey not candied during storage? There are several reasons why honey may not be candied (crystallized). This effect may not portend anything bad and simply indicate the origin of the honey. However, sometimes honey that has not been candied turns out to be of poor quality, which indicates the beekeeper’s carelessness. Good honey, but not candied. So, let’s take a closer look at the option when honey of normal quality lasts a month, two, a year and is not candied. The essence of the crystallization process of honey is stored in its composition. Or rather, in its two main constituent elements: glucose and fructose. Glucose easily crystallizes and has a sweetish taste. Fructose does not crystallize and is 2 times sweeter than glucose. In honey with a high fructose content, fructose envelops the crystals of glucose, sucrose and other well-crystallizing sugars, thereby preventing the honey from becoming sugary. If honey contains less than 30% glucose, then such honey will not crystallize at all. There are varieties of honey with low glucose content, such honey is more liquid (at normal humidity) and crystallizes very slowly. If your average room temperature is above +23 C, then this honey can stay in the room for a year in a liquid state. If properly stored, such honey will not spoil and will also retain all its qualities and usefulness. The most favorable temperature for crystallization is +10 – +15 C. At higher and lower temperatures, the crystallization of honey slows down. Slowly crystallizing include: sage honey , acacia, chestnut, fireweed honey (not all, depending on the place where fireweed grows), etc. Bad honey is not candied. Now let’s look at the options in which situations the honey remains liquid, but its quality leaves much to be desired.1) Not mature honey Often, novice beekeepers, without waiting for the honey to ripen within the framework, pump it out in order to get a quick profit or simply do not know when the honey is ripe. Mature honey is honey in which all the basic reactions have taken place to break down complex sugars into simpler ones and from which the bees have evaporated all the excess moisture. When the honey is ripe, the bees cover the frames with honeycombs with wax caps. When the frame is completely sealed, the honey is ready to be pumped out. Unripe honey has a high moisture content, and this partially prevents crystallization. Such honey can separate and ferment after a couple of months. Fermented honey has a sharp and sour smell. 2) Incorrect storage. Honey is very hygroscopic (able to absorb moisture). In a warm, humid environment, honey absorbs moisture, which in the first case prevents crystallization and can also lead to fermentation. 3) Not natural honey or diluted. Often in our consumer life we ​​buy low-quality products. There are a lot of fake honeys on the market, some dilute honey with sugar syrup, others add starch or flour so that the fake is thick and viscous, like honey. Overheated honey 4) Overheated honey. When heated, honey becomes liquid. But you can heat it up to +40 C, no more. At higher temperatures, vitamins and all beneficial properties are lost. Some sellers, in order to give honey a marketable appearance, heat and overheat it. Honey becomes liquid and loses its crystallization properties. Such honey will not crystallize at all. The smell practically disappears. The color of superheated honey can be described as dark brown amber. Depending on the degree of overheating, honey is either lighter or darker, but a brown tint is always present in this case. We recently encountered a new type of counterfeit. The Chinese bring a certain powder in briquettes, dilute it with either water or some kind of reagent and the resulting honey is indistinguishable from natural honey in color and smell. The most important thing is that in chemistry. in laboratories, upon superficial analysis, the results indicate the naturalness of honey. Advice: How to “make” honey crystallize? If you doubt the quality of the honey you purchased because it remains liquid for a long time. Find a little candied honey (a teaspoon is enough), mix it in some container with a tablespoon of liquid honey so that you get a homogeneous mass and pour this mixture into a jar with liquid honey. Place the jar in a cool, dry place (+10 – +15 C). After a couple of weeks, if the honey is natural, it will definitely crystallize. People often ask: “why is honey not candied during storage?” In this article I tried to give basic answers to the question asked. And don’t be upset if your honey remains liquid for a long time, try following the advice given in this article, and you will decide on the quality of your jar of honey.

How to check honey Honey evaluation criteria

Of course, it is best to determine the quality of a product before purchasing it, then you can avoid disappointment and not waste money. But if it so happens that honey has already been purchased, then you can verify its usefulness by assessing several key criteria:

• Color. First of all, the shade of honey should correspond to the variety and have a slightly golden cast. For example, floral will be light and sunny, linden will give off amber, buckwheat will have a rich brown color. The product must be free of cloudiness, sediment or suspicious inclusions. The presence of pieces of honeycomb, bees or other bee products is considered normal.
• Aroma. When you open a jar of honey, you should definitely smell it, since the aroma of the real product is difficult to confuse with anything else. It has a light but very rich scent. Diluted honey smells almost nothing or gives off only light notes.
• Viscosity. If the honey is easily taken out of the jar with a spoon and there is no thin thread behind it, then it is a fake. Another characteristic feature of the natural product is its strong viscosity, which requires a lot of effort to scoop it up and separate it from the main mass.
• Consistency. Natural honey can even be rubbed into the skin, it has such a delicate consistency. If you take a small amount and grind it, not a single lump should form in the process, otherwise the jar contains a fake.
• Taste. The sweetish and slightly tart taste cannot be confused with anything else. Real honey is distinguished by its richness of shades.

May, chestnut, Greek, clover, acacia varieties retain their original consistency for a longer time and remain liquid, while heather, dandelion, sunflower, rapeseed and sweet clover are subject to faster crystallization.

To understand that the process of sediment formation is normal and natural, it is necessary to identify the reasons for its appearance:

• The main reason why nectar will become sugary is due to its chemical composition, namely the three main elements - fructose, glucose and sucrose. It is glucose that tends to crystallize and sugar the product. The more glucose is contained, the faster the density of the product will increase. And vice versa - if the glucose content is low and fructose predominates, honey will retain its liquid consistency for a longer time;

Candied honey

• getting a large amount of pollen into the container when collecting nectar will also speed up the sugaring process. The fact is that in addition to the glucose crystals themselves, the pollen is also enveloped by other small particles that fall on it during collection - all of this settles to the bottom. The sediment in this case will have a granular structure;
• temperature regime. It has been proven that at a storage temperature of 15 ° C, honey sugars slowly. Therefore, if you put it in the refrigerator, the obvious result will be that after a short time it will turn into a solid whitish substance, its consistency reminiscent of pork fat. If you don’t want the treat to thicken quickly, storing it in the refrigerator is not recommended.
• The process of sediment formation is also influenced by the weather in which the honey was collected. If it was collected in hot summer weather, the product will thicken faster, and if the weather was cold and rainy, then vice versa.

Honey collection

In addition to natural reasons due to which honey crystallizes, there are also unnatural ones. Thus, unscrupulous beekeepers can add water and various artificial additives to the nectar in order to increase the amount of the product. Such a product will remain liquid for a long time, but will lose its beneficial qualities. In addition, rolling out unripe honey is also practiced to speed up sales. This also adversely affects the composition of the product and its shelf life. Such honey begins to thicken from the bottom, while the top remains liquid. The answer to the question of how real honey is candied - from below or from above - is clear: evenly.

Honey grains. Why does honey shrink?

Honey is an amazing, mysterious substance created by nature. It has been used by humans for thousands of years, but not all of its secrets have been revealed to this day.

You can learn a lot more interesting and useful things about this sweetness.

Today I want to talk about the crystallization of honey, or as they also say, sugaring, and I will answer the question: why does honey set?

Buyers often come to us and want to buy it liquid in winter, many love it in this form and many think that the right honey is only flowing. If it is thick and grains are felt, then they believe that sugar has been added, that the product is bad and of poor quality. I can tell you about such a case. A woman bought honey from us and, upon opening the jar, was surprised that it was thick with grains. She was sure that it was all sugar and that real honey was only liquid. I had to explain that the honey had shrunk and this was its normal state. Let's deal with this misconception.

Honey is alive and after being pumped out of the frames, certain processes operate in it. Over the course of several months, chemical reactions occur in this amazing product and it matures. For example, fresh bee products contain a small amount of sucrose, about 5%. During the ripening process, it decomposes into simple sugars. If you do an analysis after pumping, you will see a small % of sucrose; repeating the analysis after some time, you will not find any sucrose. If the bees were fed sugar, then the sucrose content will be high, so this is one of the indicators of naturalness. This living nectar contains enzymes, they participate in transformations. One interesting fact. We have customers who follow Ayurveda. They acquire this sweetness only after a year of storage, considering it more healthy.

The main factors influencing the crystallization of honey:

1)% ratio of fructose and glucose

2) its humidity

3) honey plants from which bees collected nectar

4) storage temperature

This beekeeping product contains many more types of sugars, more than 20, and not three, as was recently thought. But the main ones are glucose and fructose. How quickly honey can be candied depends on their ratio. If the % of fructose is high, then it will not sit down for a long time; if there is more glucose, then it will sit down quickly. Fructose is always liquid, and even in shriveled honey it is distributed among glucose, so it is plastic and almost never hard. Different varieties have different amounts of glucose and fructose. It depends on the area, the breed of bees, even weather conditions, and of course on the honey plants. That is why some honey dries faster, while others remain in a liquid state for a long time. The more fruit sugar, the longer the honey will take to set. For example, pure bee product from acacia crystallizes within a year and contains a large amount of fructose. Honeydew may not be candied at all. This happens due to the substance melicitose. It prevents glucose from crystallizing.

At first it becomes slightly cloudy. Pollen grains are always present in a natural product; they serve as centers for the formation of crystals, which fall or “sit” to the bottom, so sugaring begins from the bottom. If the bee product is filtered, the number of pollen grains will decrease and it will not become candied longer. There are filters abroad that generally remove pollen; according to our Guests, such a food cannot be called honey at all.

The ambient temperature also affects the sugaring of honey. This happens faster in the cold. If the sweetness is kept in a warm room after pumping out, it will remain liquid longer.

One more thing. The higher the moisture content of the amber sweetness, the longer the liquid state will remain. According to GOST, water content is allowed up to 21%. During storage, moisture evaporates and sugars become more concentrated.

Honey is grown in small or large grains. It depends on the size of the crystals formed, small or large. Not everyone likes large grains; it is much more pleasant to put them in your mouth and suck on the delicate consistency. To achieve this, a special technique is used: “fermentation”. They take last year's bee product that has already grown. Rub to break up large crystals. The smaller the grains in the “seed”, the more delicate the consistency of the final product. The starter is first mixed with a small amount of liquid bee product, then added to the container with the rest of the honey, mixed well and placed in a cool room. Sourdough crystals are the centers for the formation of new clots in fresh sweetness, and at low temperatures crystallization occurs very quickly, within 1-2 days, giving an oil-like consistency.

Once again, I would like to warn buyers, be wary of liquid honey out of season, you may end up with a fake: an artificial product never shrinks, liquid honey can be heated, which is also not very good. Buy the right shriveled honey.