INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT HONEY

• Honey never spoils. No need to refrigerate it. Unopened, it can be stored indefinitely at room temperature in a dry cupboard.
• Sealed honey vats found in King Tut’s tomb still contained edible honey, despite over 2,000 years beneath the sands.
• Due to the high level of fructose, honey is 25% sweeter than table sugar.
• Honey is created when bees mix plant nectar, a sweet substance secreted by flowers, with their own bee enzymes.
• To make one pound of honey it would take 556 workers and 2 million flowers.
• 50-100 flowers are pollinated during one collection trip.
• About one ounce of honey is all it takes to give the honey bee enough energy to fly around the world (although the farthest they usually fly away from their hive is six miles).
• To make honey, bees drop the collected nectar into the honeycomb and then evaporate it by fanning their wings.
• Honey has different flavors and colors, depending on the location and kinds of flowers the bees visit. Climatic conditions of the area also influence its flavor and color.
• In the days before biology and botany were understood, people thought it was a special kind of magic that turned flower nectar into honey.
• Honey contains vitamins and antioxidants, but is fat free, cholesterol free and sodium free!
• For years, opera singers have used honey to boost their energy and soothe their throats before performances.
• Honey has the ability to attract and absorb moisture, which makes it remarkably soothing for minor burns and helps to prevent scarring.
• Honey speeds the healing of open wounds and also combats infection.
• As recently as the First World War, honey was being mixed with cod liver oil to dress wounds on the battlefield.
• Queen Anne of England, in the early 1700’s, invented a honey and olive oil preparation to keep her hair healthy and lustrous.
• Modern science now acknowledges honey as an anti-microbial agent, which means it deters the growth of certain types of bacteria, yeast, and moulds.
• Honey and beeswax form the basics of many skin creams, lipsticks, and hand lotions.
• Recent studies have proven that athletes who took some honey before and after competing recovered more quickly than those who did not.
• Honey is the only food that includes all the substances necessary to sustain life, including enzymes, vitamins, minerals, and water; and it’s the only food that contains “pinocembrin”, an antioxidant associated with improved brain functioning.

 

SOURCE: http://kare.co.nz/honey-bees/interesting-facts-about-honey-bees/