How to identify honey using water. How to identify natural honey

Only natural mature honey has priceless healing properties. Therefore, checking its quality is of great importance. Take note of simple methods on how to do it at home.

Features of checking honey

Counterfeit honey is sold not only in the market, it is present on the shelves of shops and supermarkets. It is possible to determine whether honey is of high quality or not by examining its three characteristic qualities: nutritional value, constancy of natural composition, and storage acceptability. The nutritional value of honey is affected by the amount of carbohydrates it contains and the maturity. Its taste and medicinal properties depend on the maturity of honey.

How to check honey for naturalness by external signs

Sometimes it is required to check the naturalness of honey when buying on the market or in a store without the use of additional substances. The fastest and simplest honey check is performed by external signs, without detailed analysis:

• Natural honey is easily rubbed between the fingers, absorbed by the skin of the hands.
• Examine the surface of the honey. It should not have foam in the form of bubbles. Fermentation, foaming - a sign of immaturity or the addition of water. Natural honey contains particles of pollen, wax, and other natural inclusions. Too pure, transparent honey - most likely artificial.
• Competent buyers do not seek to purchase liquid honey, because "candied" is more difficult to fake. Natural honey crystallizes over time, fake honey crystallizes very slowly or does not exist at all. At the end of autumn and winter there is no liquid natural honey, even late varieties crystallize. There are exceptions to the rule, some varieties of honey are always liquid: lime, May, buckwheat, fireweed, acacia. In the summer, crystallized honey is last year's or even older.
• The taste of natural honey is sweet, but in moderation, a little tart. In the mouth, it can cause a slight tingling, burning sensation. Artificial honey does not have such taste qualities. Honey acquires a light aftertaste of caramel when heated. "Heated" honey has a more presentable presentation, but is less useful. It loses its unique healing properties at a temperature of +50 degrees and even at +35-40 degrees it can become harmful, carcinogenic.
• Another sign of the naturalness of honey is the smell. The natural product has a characteristic, easily recognizable fragrant aroma, the fake has no smell.

It is very difficult to check honey for naturalness in market conditions. The considered methods cannot protect you from all possible falsifications. Choose honey for color, smell and texture.

How to find out the naturalness of honey by viscosity

A more detailed check of honey can be done at home, this will help to study the product for viscosity. Ripe, natural honey has a viscous consistency. It is important that when experimenting with honey, the ambient temperature is neither high nor low, approximately +20-21 degrees.

Features of checking the viscosity of honey:

1. Dip a tablespoon in the honey and swirl it quickly a few times. Natural, high-quality honey will wrap around the spoon without dripping from it.
2. Dip a teaspoon into the honey. After removing it, watch how the honey flows from it. The process should take place slowly, in large drops. Most of the honey will remain on the spoon. This happens because mature honey is very viscous, it contains about 21% water. Unripe - more liquid.
3. Dip a wooden stick in honey. Pick her up. Honey should flow in a continuous, viscous stream. Natural honey does not drip, does not splash, forms a hill on the surface, which gradually compares with the rest of the mass.

Mature, high-quality honey is very viscous, its humidity according to GOST is not higher than 18-20%. Early pumped honey is immature, it is poorly stored and can ferment.

Checking the quality of honey at home by heating and weighing

Even laboratory analyzes of honey do not provide complete information about its quality. The properties of each honey are unique. Its composition is influenced by many factors: the region of collection, the variety of honey plants, the breed of bees, the maturity of honey at the time of the study, the presence of pollen.

Instructions for testing honey by heating:

• Place a closed jar of honey (50 g) into a vessel of water. For 10 minutes, heat the honey in a water bath at a temperature of about + 45? C. Then open the lid and do an odor assessment. It must be tangible. Lack of smell is a sign of falsification.
• Warm the honey in a water bath for a longer time, about an hour. If the studied honey begins to exfoliate, then it is natural, otherwise it is a fake.

You can determine the quality of honey at home by weighing its density. Pour 1 liter of water into the vessel and mark its level with a marker. Pour out the water, dry the jar. To the mark made, fill the vessel with honey. Weigh the vessel with honey very accurately, up to a gram. Subtract the weight of the jar to get the exact weight of a liter of honey. Divide the weight of honey by the weight of water, i.e. per 1000. The accepted standard for the density of honey in Russia is 1.41 kg/l.

High-quality mature natural honey has a density in the range of 1.4-1.6 kg/l. If the density is below the permissible minimum - the honey is immature, of poor quality, above the upper limit of the range - an error in the calculations or when weighing.

Checking honey at home using non-traditional methods

Even high-quality honey, when purchased, may show signs of a fake. It is very difficult to distinguish natural honey from falsification. The best way not to make a mistake in honey sweetness is to take it from trusted beekeepers. There will always be friends who will advise this. But, if there are no reliable beekeepers, but you want honey, then use unusual methods for checking honey at home:

1. The authenticity of honey can be established by setting it on fire. Spread honey on a piece of paper and set it on fire. Watch the reaction. Natural honey will become a little liquid from the high temperature - and that's it, no more changes will happen to it. It will not burn or change color. The product will melt if the bees are fed sugar syrup instead of nectar. The brown color of the product indicates the presence of sugar in it.
2. Pour a spoonful of honey on a plate, add three times as much water and start shaking the plate vigorously in a horizontal direction. On the surface of a natural product, a pattern resembling a honeycomb is formed.
3. Put a piece of bread in honey, wait a while. After 10-15 minutes, check its condition. In a good clean product, the bread will harden, if the bread has softened, it means that sugar syrup has been added to the honey.
4. You can test honey with stainless steel wire. Heat the wire on fire and dip it in honey. Take it out and inspect. If the wire is clean, then everything is fine, if some particles stick to it, then this indicates the presence of impurities that make honey of poor quality.
5. The simplest method of testing honey for water is with fluffy paper. Take a napkin, blotting paper or piece of newspaper and drip honey on it. There should be no moisture around the drop, the paper should remain dry.
6. The most difficult thing is to independently determine the admixture of inverted sugar, which is used to create artificial honey. For the experiment, you will need drugs sold in a pharmacy - ether, resorcinol, concentrated hydrochloric acid. Rub some honey with ether. Filter the resulting solution, evaporate. Make a 1% solution of resorcinol in hydrochloric acid. Mix a few drops of the resulting solution into the mass remaining after evaporating the essential honey. Getting a color from orange to bright red indicates the presence of inverted sugar in honey.

Knowing the basic properties and characteristics of honey will most likely help you avoid buying low-quality or artificial honey. Checking honey at home can be done without the use of special preparations.

Determination of the naturalness of honey and the presence of impurities

It is possible to determine the naturalness of honey with 100% certainty only in the laboratory, but only a few people donate honey for research. "Home" methods for determining the naturalness of a honey product do not always give an absolutely unmistakable result, but sometimes they help to distinguish a good product from a fake.

Consider how to determine the presence of impurities in honey:

• Examine the solution of honey with water to the light: if the honey is of high quality, natural, then it will be cloudy or iridescent. Impurities will create a precipitate.
• Put honey on the palm of your hand and swipe it with an indelible pencil. If there are impurities or water, then the trace will be greenish or purple. In high quality honey, the chemical pencil will not leave a mark. The test is not 100% reliable. Excess moisture can be in natural young honey.
• During long-term storage, light crystals can form in honey, and a non-candied mass of brown color will remain in the center - this is a sure sign of the presence of impurities.

To make honey not only tasty, but also have medicinal properties, be sure to check its authenticity on a small volume, only after making sure of its quality, take honey for future use.

How to test honey for sugar

Mixing sugar syrup into honey, feeding bees with sugar are the most common ways to falsify a bee product. When determining the naturalness of "liquid gold", buyers want to receive accurate information about the absence of sugar in it, which is added by unscrupulous beekeepers:

1. Adding sugar to honey gives it the smell of sweet water, without the pleasant honey aroma. Such honey tastes sickly sweet, the color is suspiciously white.
2. During storage, liquid honey with the addition of sugar syrup becomes gelatinous, does not crystallize. "Sugar" honey has no astringency, it is perfectly transparent, without aroma.
3. Sucrose (cane sugar) is detected in a honey solution of lapis (silver nitrate). The honey solution for this experiment should be 5-10 percent. The precipitation of a white silvery precipitate is a sign of honey adulteration.
4. In a cup of weakly brewed black tea, put a spoonful of honey, stir until it is completely dissolved. If the tea becomes cloudy, it means that there is sugar in the honey. High-quality honey does not give sediment, the tea will only darken slightly.

Ways to test honey with additional substances

The most common methods for checking honey for naturalness are based on a solution of honey in water and some additional substances, such as iodine, vinegar, ammonia, milk. To create the initial solution, mix distilled water with honey in a ratio of 2 to 1.

Testing honey for flour with iodine

Unscrupulous beekeepers add flour or starch to honey to increase its mass or density. The admixture of starch, starch syrup, flour in honey is determined by adding iodine tincture to the initial solution. In natural honey there are no elements that react with iodine.

Checking the quality of honey with iodine is the most common and is performed as follows:

• 3-4 drops of iodine are enough for a solution of falsified honey to turn blue if starch or flour is present in it due to a chemical reaction.
• Increase the amount of iodine in the honey solution - and the intensity of the blue color will also increase. The more intense the color, the more starchy impurities in honey.
• Any change in the color of the honey solution when tested with iodine, with the exception of yellow, indicates the presence of non-bee additives. The natural product does not react to iodine, its color will not change.

Acetic acid for the determination of chalk chips in honey

The admixture of chalk chips increases the weight of the product, masking its poor condition. This honey is fake. The falsification of honey with the help of chalk chips is easily detected by using ordinary table vinegar or vinegar essence. Chalk reacts with acetic acid, it is accompanied by the release of carbon dioxide.

Add a little acetic acid to the initial solution, a couple of drops are enough. The presence of chalk in honey will cause foaming and fizzing. Sometimes chalk is added in small quantities, and the reaction will not be noticeable if the acid has not touched the chalk. In this case, it is better to use vinegar essence for express analysis.

Let the original solution settle, carefully drain the water, a layer of chalky sediment will remain at the bottom, which can be examined with acid.

Ammonia for detecting starch syrup

Starch syrup, added to honey, worsens its most valuable indicators. Honey "flavored" with molasses has a high viscosity, has a pronounced smell of molasses, and the content of reducing sugars is reduced in it. Residues in the adulterated sulfuric acid formed during the technological processing of molasses precipitate under the influence of certain reagents, such as ammonia.

Drop 5-10 drops of strong ammonia into the honey solution. A brown precipitate may form. The solution itself will also turn brown. This effect gives starch syrup. A solution of natural honey will not become cloudy when 96? alcohol. A solution with low-quality honey will turn whitish, as if milk is added.

Checking honey for sugar with milk

If the bees were fed with sugar, then it, like any non-natural honey product, does not have medicinal properties. It lacks the useful components of natural honey: vitamins, organic acids, aromatic substances, protein, mineral salts. You can determine "sugar" honey without complicated experiments, by using milk.

Add honey to hot cow's milk, if it curdles, then the honey was faked using burnt sugar. Real honey will dissolve in milk, gently sinking to the bottom of the dish.

The main component of unnatural honey is silicon, there are practically no other salts. In natural honey, the opposite is true.

How to determine the quality of honey - look at the video:

These "home" methods of verification are simple and affordable, but they do not give 100% confidence in the correctness of the results of the experiment to determine the quality of honey. You should not immediately buy a large jar of honey from an unfamiliar beekeeper, first take a small one, examine the honey for quality and authenticity.

There are more honey merchants, and less natural honey in the windows! What kind of tricks do not go manufacturers of fake honey. In pursuit of sales volumes and revenue, the quality of the product and its naturalness fade into the background. Consider the types of adulterated honey in more detail.

Types of fake honey

• Natural honey with additives. Sugar syrup tinted with tea, beet molasses, chalk, starch, flour, etc. are added to bee honey. If chemical thickeners and flavors are used, the result can be much more harmful than ordinary sugar and flour.
• Artificial honey. It is produced from beet or cane sugar, as well as from the juice of plants (melon, watermelon, corn), followed by coloring. Such "honey" does not contain useful enzymes, but in appearance and taste it is difficult to distinguish from natural.
• Honey after feeding sugar syrup to bees."Inventive" beekeepers put with hives feeders with sugar syrup. The bees do not bother to extract nectar and ferment honey from sugar. The resulting product is whitish, difficult to crystallize and lacks many useful properties. Sometimes even the laboratory cannot detect a fake in it. Therefore, the reputation of the manufacturer is so important, the decency of which can be no doubt.
• Melted and heated natural honey. To give honey a marketable appearance, last year's "harvest" is melted and deprived of all valuable qualities when heated. Unripe honey can be heated to remove excess moisture. The product after such frauds is distinguished by a caramel flavor, a characteristic brownish color and a strong tickle in the throat. And in the cold, it forms vitreous filaments. Heated honey is pure and transparent, there is no trace of pollen grains and suspended particles, as well as useful enzymes, trace elements and vitamins.

Fake honey has become widespread in the market. All their varieties are characterized by the absence of many valuable nutrients (vitamins, mineral salts, organic acids, proteins and aromatic compounds) and can be dangerous to human health. To get an accurate answer about the quality of food, you must contact specialized state laboratories or testing centers. There are also many folk methods to distinguish fake honey at home.

Appearance, color

Pure honey is always transparent and clear. Its viscosity can be studied by lowering a thin needle or stick into the dish, after which it will stretch with a long thread, and if interrupted, it will fall entirely, forming a “turret” on the surface of the product. A fake will behave more like glue, dripping and dripping from the knitting needle, it can even create splashes.

You can distinguish natural honey by its density, which must correspond to the varietal characteristics. At a temperature of 20°C, a quality product, when wound on a spoon, is wound like a ribbon in a long strip and is interrupted at a certain moment. Its structure is quite delicate, when rubbed in the palm of your hand, it is absorbed into the skin.

High-quality flower honey contains no more than 5% sucrose, honeydew - no more than 10%. Increased quantities can only be determined within the walls of the laboratory. Some features of the appearance and properties of the product should alert the buyer even during a cursory examination, making them suspect a fake:

• the smell of stale honeycombs;
• unexpressed fresh taste;
• too thin consistency for fresh honey or sticky, sticky and thick for a long-term stored product.

Warning: Honey of a pronounced white color may turn out to be sugar, dark brown - honeydew. An underdeveloped aroma or caramel flavor often indicates that the product has melted.

Consistency

Honey purchased in winter is usually hardened. If the product remains plastic in this season, it most often means that it is diluted or heated. There are varieties that do not shrink longer than others, but they are difficult to distinguish from a fake:

1. May honey contains a large amount of fructose, so it does not get candied for a long time. This is the earliest variety, one of the most beneficial to human health, but it is he who often turns out to be a fake.
2. Acacia honey also contains a significant proportion of fructose and water, therefore it is able to maintain plasticity for up to 1-2 years.
3. Greek honey is a great value, pine and thyme varieties are especially popular. They thicken only six months after collection, and under certain conditions, they can retain a liquid consistency for up to 1.5 years.
4. Chestnut honey is a viscous and dark variety that takes 6-12 months to shrink. With prolonged storage, it forms larger and larger crystals, and also begins to delaminate.

A liquid consistency is characteristic of unripe honey, which flows from the cutlery without forming a viscous thread. It is pumped out in case of a shortage of combs, it is not complete and biologically active, contains too much water and cannot be stored for a long time. Fermentation processes quickly begin in it, since the product is not sufficiently enriched with sucrose and enzymes.

Rules for choosing and purchasing honey

It is desirable to purchase honey in a private apiary from beekeepers whose product quality is confirmed by friends or known from personal experience. When buying a treat for the first time, it is better to limit yourself to a volume of 100-200 g in order to be able to calmly study it without serious financial expenses.

Before purchasing honey, it is necessary to check whether the fermentation process has begun in it. This is easy to do by gently stirring it, while there should not be a special viscosity, active foam formation and the appearance of gas bubbles, a burnt or alcohol taste, and a sour smell should be felt.

You should avoid buying honey collected in apiaries located in ecologically unfavorable areas, near roads with active traffic flow and an abundance of exhaust gases. The ingress of lead compounds and other heavy metals into bee products adversely affects human health.

Important! You can buy honey only if the seller stores it in a glass, wooden, ceramic or porcelain container. The use of metal utensils is unacceptable.

Methods for detecting counterfeit honey at home

A popular method for determining the quality of honey is the use of a chemical pencil. The product is applied in a layer on a finger, paper or spoon, the rod of the device is immersed inside or carried out from above. It is believed that a trace will remain on the fake, which will indicate the presence of water and sugar impurities. The method was studied by V.G. Chudakov in 1972, and his studies clearly demonstrated the unreliability of the results obtained.

A sample on blotting paper allows you to accurately distinguish fake products, but some samples of natural ones also fall into their number. It is carried out as follows: honey is placed on a sheet of blotting paper in a small amount and it is checked whether a watery spot has appeared on the reverse side. Its formation will almost always mean that the product is falsified.

There are also separate methods for detecting the presence of impurities in honey:

1. The easiest way is to stir a spoonful of the product in a transparent glass or jar of water. The impurity, if present, will settle to the bottom of the dish, while the honey will dissolve without residue.
2. Another method to distinguish a fake is to lower a hot stainless steel wire into the product. It will remain clear if the honey is real, and covered with a sticky substance if the sample is falsified.
3. Sugar or beet molasses in a product can be determined by combining a 5-10% aqueous solution of honey with a solution of lapis (silver nitrate). The formation of a white precipitate will indicate that honey contains the indicated impurity.
4. The dilution of the product with sugar syrup is also easy to see by mixing 22.5 ml of methanol with 5 ml of a 20% aqueous honey solution (prepared using distilled water). A large amount of whitish-yellow sediment will also indicate that the treat is diluted.
5. The presence of glucose syrup can be determined by combining the product with water and alcohol (1 part honey to 2-3 parts distilled water and a quarter volume of 96% alcohol). The solution should be shaken well: in the presence of foreign compounds, it will take on a shade of milk. If the liquid is given time to settle, the dextrin precipitates as a sticky, transparent substance with a semi-liquid consistency.
6. The lack of timely shrinkage of honey and its special stickiness also make it possible to recognize a fake. A solution of a quality product will remain unclouded as a result of the experiment.
7. Flour or starch impurities are easily detected using iodine. Honey is diluted in water in a ratio of 1: 2, take 3-5 ml of the resulting solution and combine with 3-5 drops of iodine tincture or Lugol solution. The appearance of a blue tint of the liquid will indicate a fake.
8. Determining the presence of invert sugar in a product is not easy. For this purpose, 5 g of the sample is triturated with a small volume of ether capable of dissolving the substances resulting from the breakdown of fructose. The resulting solution is strained into a bowl, evaporated and the dry residue is combined with 2-3 drops of a fresh 1% solution of resorcinol in saturated hydrochloric acid (specific gravity 1.125 g). The appearance of an orange or cherry hue indicates a positive reaction to the presence of the desired substance and the fake honey.
9. The addition of honeydew honey can be detected as follows: combine lime water and a 50% aqueous solution of honey (in a ratio of 2 to 1), boil the composition. The formation of a precipitate in the form of brown flakes indicates a positive reaction to the presence of an impurity.
10. The presence of chalk is easy to determine using vinegar essence, the aqueous solution of the fake in this case will hiss when it is added.

Video: About ways to fake natural honey in the program "Quality Mark"

Methods for determining the quality of honey

Many people ask: "Where to make an examination of honey in St. Petersburg?"

I answer: "In the State Budgetary Institution of the St. Petersburg City Veterinary Laboratory at the address: Rizhskaya St., 6, lit. A

Test center phone: 444-57-11

The people have their own methods of how to determine the quality of honey, for example, using a chemical pencil. The bottom line is this: a layer of honey is applied to paper, a finger or a spoon and a chemical pencil is drawn over it, or a pencil is dipped into the honey itself. It is assumed that if the honey is falsified, i.e. contains all sorts of impurities (sugar, sugar honey, as well as an increased amount of water), then a colored pencil mark will remain. However, the researcher V. G. Chudakov in 1972 tested 36 samples of honey of different quality, including 13 falsified ones, and believes that this folk method for determining the naturalness of honey and assessing its quality is absolutely wrong.

There is another folk method to determine the falsification of honey, it consists in a test on blotting paper. A small amount of honey is placed on blotting paper. If after a few minutes a watery spot appears on the back of the paper, this is considered a sign of falsification. Again, V. G. Chudakov conducted laboratory studies of this sample, which led to the conclusion that the sample actually allows you to determine almost 100% of counterfeit honey, but besides, some natural honeys also fall into the category of counterfeit.

If you buy honey, then look in the reference books for how it should look. The main thing is that it must have a certain aroma, honey taste, that is, a bouquet corresponding to a certain variety of natural honey must also match the color.

If the honey is too white, this should raise the suspicion that it is sugar? If the color is dark brown - is it not honeydew? If its aroma is blunted, the taste of caramel is felt - it means that it is melted honey.

Also pay attention to the consistency of honey - it should correspond to the density of the variety, at a temperature of 20 degrees Celsius it should be wound on a spoon, like a ribbon, with sweet threads that break at a certain moment.

Liquid honey should arouse suspicion. Most likely, this is unripe honey. It will not be stored, it will ferment, as it contains a lot of water. Such honey will not "wrap" on a spoon, but will simply drain from it. If you buy honey in the winter, it should not be liquid, and if it is, then it has most likely been warmed up or diluted.

When buying, check the honey for fermentation. When stirring, it should not be felt that it is not viscous, actively foaming, gas bubbles appear on the surface, that a specific sour smell comes from it, and there is also an alcohol or burnt taste.

Before buying a large amount of honey, buy 100-200 grams for a sample.

Beware of purchasing honey from apiaries located along highways with heavy traffic. In such honey, there may be an increased amount of lead compounds and other substances that fall on flowers with car exhaust. With nectar and pollen, lead gets into honey, and this is dangerous for the health of those who use it.

Honey collected in areas with unfavorable ecology is very harmful.

How to identify impurities in honey?

To determine various impurities in honey, the following methods are recommended. Pour water into a transparent jar, add one teaspoon of honey, stir - the honey will dissolve, an impurity will settle at the bottom.

In order to detect an admixture of flour or starch in honey, you need to pour 3-5 ml of an aqueous solution of honey (1: 2) into a jar or glass and add 3-5 drops of Lugol's solution (or tincture of iodine). If honey contains flour or starch, the solution will turn blue.

An admixture of molasses (a mixture of cool water and starchy sugar) can be recognized by its appearance, stickiness, and lack of crystallization. You can also mix one part of honey with 2-3 parts of distilled water, add a quarter of the volume of 96% alcohol and shake. If there is starch syrup in honey, then the solution will take on a milky color. After settling this solution, a transparent semi-liquid sticky mass (dextrin) will settle. If the impurity is absent, the solution will remain transparent.

You can detect impurities of sugar (beet) molasses and ordinary sugar by adding a solution of silver nitrate (lapis) to a 5-10% solution of honey in water. If a white precipitate of silver chloride falls out, then this indicates the presence of an impurity. If there is no sediment, then the honey is pure. There is another way: to 5 ml of a 20% solution of honey in distilled water, add 22.5 ml of methyl (wood) alcohol, with the formation of an abundant yellowish-white precipitate, it will become clear that honey contains sugar syrup.

To detect an admixture of inverted sugar (grated honey), there is a rather complicated method: grind 5 g of honey with a small amount of ether (in which fructose breakdown products dissolve), then filter the ether solution into a bowl, evaporate to dryness and add 2-3 drops of freshly prepared 1 % solution of resorcinol in concentrated hydrochloric acid (sp. weight 1.125 g). If the impurity turns orange (to cherry red), then there is invert sugar.

An increased percentage of sucrose in honey, which can be established in the laboratory, indicates its poor quality: in natural flower honey, sucrose is not more than 5%, not more than 10% - in honeydew. The better the quality of natural honey, the less sucrose it contains. "Sugar" honey has its own organoleptic characteristics: the smell of old honeycombs, insipid inexpressive taste, liquid consistency (if it is fresh), during long-term storage it becomes thick, sticky, sticky.

"Sugar" honey (the bees were fed or fed with sugar), like all non-natural honey, is distinguished by the absence of vitamins, organic acids, protein and aromatic substances, mineral salts. In sugar honey, silicon is the main element, and other salts are practically absent, there are only traces of them. In natural honey - on the contrary.

If the honey does not crystallize, then it can be assumed that there is an admixture of potato molasses.

In order to detect an admixture of honeydew honey, pour 1 part of an aqueous solution of honey (1: 1) into a glass and add 2 parts of lime water, then heat the mixture to a boil. If brown flakes are formed that precipitate, then this indicates the presence of an admixture of honeydew honey.

A SET OF EXPRESS CHECKS OF HONEY FOR QUALITY AT PURCHASE

(Some points will repeat the above, but repetition is the mother of learning, because any reasonable adult is simply obliged not to allow himself to be fooled by any crooked crooks and in all cases be able to choose normal quality products)

Can I buy honey from my hands? Only if you are sure what you are buying. Selling honey in a store is also not a guarantee of its quality.

The only true guarantee of the quality of the purchased honey is a personal acquaintance with the beekeeper, confidence in his integrity and the knowledge that his apiary is located in a safe area. Therefore, it is best to buy honey from a familiar beekeeper right in his apiary.

The most common fake honey is sugar syrup. The same syrup is often diluted with unripe honey to give it the missing sweetness.

First, the honey must be mature. After all, bees work on nectar for about a week: they evaporate water, enrich it with enzymes, break down complex sugars into simple ones. During this time, honey is infused. The bees seal the finished product with wax caps, it is this honey that has all its useful properties and can be stored for a long time.

Very often, beekeepers pump out honey during the honey collection, without waiting for it to ripen, due to a lack of combs. The water content in such honey is sometimes twice the norm, it is not enriched with enzymes and sucrose, and quickly turns sour.

To determine the maturity of fresh unsweetened honey, its temperature is adjusted to 20 g. C, stirring with a spoon. Then the spoon is taken out and rotated. Ripe honey wraps around her. From time to time, honey can become sugary, this is normal, and does not affect either the taste, or the aroma, or the healing qualities of honey.

With the help of simple tests, you can determine if honey is adulterated:
- Flour and starch are determined by adding a drop of iodine to a small amount of honey diluted with water. If the solution turns blue, honey with flour or starch.
- If the solution sizzles when adding vinegar essence, there is chalk in honey.
- If in a 5-10% aqueous solution of honey, when a small amount of lapis solution is added, turbidity forms around the drops, and a white precipitate precipitates, sugar has been added.

How can you determine the quality of honey?

1) By color.

• Each type of honey has its own unique color. Flower honey - light yellow, linden - amber, ash - transparent, like water, buckwheat has different shades of brown. Pure honey without impurities, as a rule, is transparent, no matter what color it is.
• Honey, which has additives in its composition (sugar, starch, other impurities), is cloudy, and if you look closely, you can find sediment in it.

2) By flavor.

• Real honey has a fragrant aroma. This scent is incomparable. Honey with an admixture of sugar has no aroma, and its taste is close to the taste of sweetened water.

3) By viscosity.

• Take a sample of honey by dropping a thin stick into the container. If it is real honey, then it follows the stick with a long continuous thread, and when this thread breaks, it will completely fall, forming a turret, a pagoda on the surface of the honey, which then slowly disperses.
• Fake honey, on the other hand, will behave like glue: it will profusely drain and drip down from the stick, forming splashes.

4) By consistency.

• In real honey, it is thin, tender. Honey is easily rubbed between the fingers and absorbed into the skin, which cannot be said about a fake. Fake honey has a rough texture, and lumps remain on the fingers when rubbed.
• Before buying honey in the market in reserve, take the product you like from 2-3 regular sellers. To start with 100 grams. Do the recommended quality tests at home and only then buy it for future use from the same sellers.

5) Check if water and sugar are added to honey.

• To do this, drop honey on a piece of low-grade unglued paper (for example, ordinary newsprint or toilet paper), which absorbs moisture well. If it spreads over the paper, forming wet spots, or even seeps through it, it is fake honey.

6) Determine if there is starch in honey.

• To do this, put a little honey in a glass, pour boiling water over it, stir and cool. After that, drop a few drops of iodine there. If the composition turns blue, it means that starch has been added to the honey. This is fake honey.

7) Find out if there are other impurities in honey.

• To do this, take a red-hot stainless steel wire (you can heat it in the flame of a lighter) and lower it into honey. If a sticky foreign mass hangs on it, this is a fake for honey, but if the wire remains clean, honey is natural or, in other words, full-fledged.

8) What should I pay attention to when buying honey?

• Honey, incl. and when sold, it cannot be stored in metal containers, since the acids contained in its composition can give oxidation. This will lead to an increase in the content of heavy metals in it and to a decrease in useful substances. Such honey can cause discomfort in the stomach and even lead to poisoning.

Conscientious sellers store honey only in glass, earthenware, porcelain, ceramic and wooden utensils. If you see that honey is being sold from metal containers, immediately step aside.

9) How else can you distinguish a fake?

• In a cup of weak warm tea, add a little of what you bought under the guise of honey. If you are not deceived, the tea will darken, but no sediment will form at the bottom.
• Over time, honey becomes cloudy and thickens (candied) - this is a sure sign of good quality. And not, as many mistakenly believe, that honey has deteriorated.
• Sometimes honey during storage is divided into two layers: it thickens only from below, and remains liquid from above. This suggests that it is immature and therefore should be eaten as quickly as possible - unripe honey only lasts a few months.
• Careless beekeepers do not take out bees to collect nectar, but simply feed them sugar. Sugar honey is not natural. There is nothing useful in it. Such "sugar" honey is unnaturally white.
• In real honey, there is no free water - in mature honey, water (about 20% of it) is completely bound in a true saturated solution. Honey with sugar syrup has a high moisture content, this can be checked in the following way: dip a piece of bread into the honey, and remove it after 8-10 minutes. Bread will harden in high-quality honey. If, on the contrary, it softened or completely spread, then in front of you is nothing more than sugar syrup.
• But no one on the market will allow you to conduct such experiments, but they will give you a try. Often honey is dripped onto a small piece of paper for tasting. This is quite enough to conduct another experiment. When going to the market for honey, take a chemical pencil with you. Smear honey on a paper with a pencil, you can smear it with your finger, and try to write something on the “honey” strip with an indelible pencil. If after a few seconds an inscription or blue stains appear, you can confidently and loudly inform the seller (so that other buyers can hear) that starch or flour is present in the product. If there is no chemical pencil, a drop of iodine will do. The same blue hue of the proposed honey will unmistakably determine the starch and flour in the product.

10) What kind of honey is better - mountain or, let's say, plain?

• Do not fall for the bait when they try to convince you that mountain honey is better than the one that bees collect in our open spaces. Mountain honey has no special advantages over “plain” honey. The quality of honey and the concentration of useful substances in it depends only on the decency and knowledge of the beekeeper, as well as on the ecological situation in the honey collection area. Here, however, there is a difference between honey collected in a clean environment, and what the bees collected from the beds of an industrial enterprise. But here it all depends on the beekeeper. Conscience should not allow him to earn on "industrial" honey.

11) Honey sellers have several tricks designed for gullible buyers.

• First, plug your ears and don't listen to what they tell you. Check everything yourself. Of course, one honest seller can fall for a bunch of liars, but how do you know that the one who is standing in front of you is honest? Try honey not only from above, but also from the bottom of the jar. Feel free to put your spoon in the jar and don't listen to the salespeople who start yelling, "Don't ruin the product!"
• Unheated honey - both fresh transparent and candied - is an effective antiseptic, and a clean spoon in a jar cannot spoil it. Another thing is if there was not honey at the bottom, or this honey was previously heated, which led to the loss of its antiseptic and all other healing properties.
• Do not buy honey on the market without checking or rolled up. The fact that honey is better stored rolled up with a tin lid is a myth. A simple screw-on or tight polyethylene lid is sufficient.
• Crystallization (candied) is a natural process for honey, which does not affect its quality and composition of nutrients. Don't let crystallized honey fool you. Do not come the next day to the seller who promised you uncrystallized honey. They will bring the same, but warmed up. And in no case should you heat honey, because. this turns it into a simple sweet substance, devoid of so many useful properties!

12) Real honey has the following features:

• Quality honey does not roll off the spoon too quickly. Take a tablespoon of honey and turn the spoon over several times in a quick circular motion. Honey will wrap around it, almost not flowing into the jar.
• Immerse the spoon into the honey container. Pulling out a spoon, evaluate the nature of the flow of honey. A good one will form a ribbon, sit down in a hillock, and bubbles form on its surface.
• All types of honey have a sweet taste, but some of the varieties have a specific taste. For example, tobacco, chestnut and willow varieties have a bitter taste, while heather is astringent. Any deviations in the taste of honey indicate its poor quality. Other taste defects may be due to the presence of impurities. Excessive acidity may be associated with the onset of fermentation, the aroma of caramel is the result of heating, obvious bitterness is incorrect storage conditions for a low-quality product.
• The color of honey depends solely on the variety. It can be all shades of brown and yellow. Don't be alarmed by pale yellow, slightly hazy honey - this is normal for acacia honey that has stood for a while, because it is candied very slowly and for a long time - sometimes completely only by the end of winter (but be sure to try it and determine for yourself that it is acacia honey). Turbidity is not inherent in other types of non-candied honey, because. the process of their sugaring (turbidity and hardening) occurs quickly - it was just transparent and suddenly (2-4 weeks after the bribe - the period depends on the type of honey) it was all sugared at once.

Another very simple express check: you need to drop honey on paper and set it on fire. The paper around burns, but real high-quality honey does not burn, does not melt and does not turn brown. If the honey began to melt, it means that the bees were fed with sugar syrup, and if it turns brown, it means that it was diluted with sugar.

Each of us knows about the taste and medicinal properties of honey. It contains more than fifty valuable substances necessary for normal human life. That's just in the markets we are not always offered a natural product. How to distinguish natural honey from a fake? You can use any of the methods listed below.

8 signs of natural honey

How to check if honey is real? Pay attention to several signs characteristic of an exclusively natural beekeeping product:

Appearance. Do you want to test honey at home? Rate his "appearance" on a five-point system. A quality product will not foam or bubble. This is how the fermentation process looks like, and good honey cannot ferment a priori.

Crystallization. After one and a half to two months, honey begins to thicken and become cloudy - this is an absolutely normal phenomenon, indicating its naturalness. Liquid honey can only be bought in the summer during pumping. The only exception is heather and acacia honey - the first turns into jelly, the second remains liquid until spring.

Smell. Real honey has a fragrant and incomparable aroma, while fake honey smells absolutely nothing.

Taste. You can test the quality of honey by tasting it on your tongue. A good product has a pleasant and slightly tart taste. It just melts in your mouth and leaves no sediment or solids behind. You may even feel a slight tingle in your throat and nose, another sure sign of high quality.

Color. The shade of this product depends on the variety:

• Linden - amber;
• Flower honey - light yellow;
• Ash - transparent;
• Buckwheat - brown;
• Linden - amber.

Knowing this, you will not allow unscrupulous sellers to make a fraudulent transaction.

Viscosity. Dip a clean and thin wooden stick into the container with the product. Real honey will stretch in a long continuous thread, forming a slowly spreading tower. The fake product will simply drip down, leaving behind nothing but splashes.

Consistency. It is very easy to check the naturalness of honey in a home laboratory - its consistency is delicate and uniform. A quality product is quickly absorbed into the skin and easily rubbed between the fingers. But the counterfeit, when rubbed, forms rough and fairly hard lumps.

Volume and weight. The composition of honey includes a lot of small particles, and therefore it simply cannot be lighter than water. A liter of honey weighs about one and a half kilograms. The lower mass indicates a high water content, which makes it very light.

How to determine the quality of honey

Pure honey is transparent, there is not even a hint of any sediment, regardless of color and variety. Do you want to check if there are any additional impurities and additives in it? You can send the purchase to the laboratory and pay a certain amount for it, or you can check the authenticity of honey at home.

• Method 1. Using paper and matches

Drop honey on a sheet of clean paper and set it on fire. If the honey is really real, the paper will burn, but the drop will remain intact. If the honey began to burn, melt or darken, then the bees were obviously fed with diluted sugar.

• Method 2. Using a chemical pencil

This is another popular method that allows you to determine the quality of honey at home in just a couple of minutes. Apply a layer of the product to your finger, spoon or paper and draw over it with a pencil. You can dip the pencil into a container of sweet nectar. The naturalness of the product is indicated by the absence of all kinds of traces on the surface of the paper, spoon or hand.

• Method 3: Using blotting paper

Do you want to know if your purchase contains sugar, starch and other additives? Put a drop of honey on a piece of blotting paper and wait a couple of minutes. Is there a water stain on the back? You have a bad fake in front of you.

• Method 4. Using tea

The quality of the product can be checked right during tea drinking. Just add a spoonful of honey to a cup and let it dissolve completely. If you are not fooled, the liquid will become darker. Will it have sediment? With a good honey, it simply does not exist.

• Method 5. Using bread

Honey is characterized by high hygroscopicity. From the environment, it draws not only odors, but also moisture. Dip a slice of fresh bread into the container and check the result in five minutes. If the honey is real, the bread will not only not get wet, but will also become harder.

• Method 6. Vinegar

By using vinegar and distilled water, you can find out if your honey contains chalk. Dilute a tablespoon of the product with half a glass of water, add three drops of table vinegar and mix everything thoroughly. In the presence of chalk, the mixture will simply boil (this is how carbon dioxide is released). As an option, use any other acid that is found in the kitchen drawers.

• Method 7. Using silver nitrate

Checking honey at home will help another simple experiment. Fill it with hot distilled water (1:2), add a solution of silver nitrate (three drops) and evaluate the state of the resulting mixture. In high-quality honey, there is no sediment or turbidity. But in the presence of sugar, the liquid becomes cloudy and covered with a whitish coating.

• Method 8. Using iodine

Are you sure there are no starch particles in the honey you bought? Find out by mixing a spoonful of the product with half a glass of hot water and three drops of iodine. The fake will take on a bright blue hue.

• Method 9. Using ammonia

The principle is the same, only in this case, iodine should be replaced with ammonia. Real honey will remain pure, low-quality honey will turn white with a brown precipitate.

• Method 10. Using cow's milk

Mix honey with hot milk. The surrogate is simply obliged to curl up, good honey will reach the bottom of the cup and dissolve.

• Method 11. Using a flame

Hold a spoonful of honey over an open fire. Nothing will happen to a good product, but the counterfeit will catch fire.

Do you know how to distinguish high quality from a fake at home? Fill up our "box" with your tips.

Try to find a seller you can trust 100%. You can track it by strong employment from May to October. This is the only way you can be sure of the quality and benefits of your purchase.