Everyone loves honey. Honey represents love and friendship. Apart from its medicinal importance, honey has got cultural and religious importance too. Even God loves honey. Science says that honeybees exist from past 50 million years. But nobody knows when man found out honey from their nest. From ancient times man has been collecting honey.

Cultural importance of honey :

Honey has got cultural importance too. In ancient Egypt, honey was used in cakes and biscuits. And also it was used in cremating dead bodies of people (Mummies).

In ancient Rome, Government used to collect tax in the form of Gold from people. But those who can’t afford Gold, used to give honey in the form of tax.

Greeks have a special tradition. When a Greek bride enters her groom’s house for very first time, she has to dip her fingers in honey and she has to draw a cross mark on the wall with her honey dipped fingers.

Bears love honey. In children’s book, we can see pictures of bears eating honey.

Religious importance of honey :

Honey is very important for Yahoodi people. They celebrate their new year “Rosh Hashanah” with honey. On New Year day, they eat honey dipped apple pieces and welcome New Year. And also we can see pictures of honey and apple in their New Year greeting cards.

Honey plays an important role in Buddhists festival “ Madhu Poornima”. When Gautam Buddha was in jungle, a monkey had offered him honey to eat. As a remembrance of this incident, Buddhists celebrate Madhu Poornima festival. On that day they offer honey to Bouddha Bhikshus (Sanyasis).

Even Quran, Bible and Vedas have explained the importance of honey. They say that honey is a healthy and nutritional food.

Production of Honey in honeybee nest :

Honeybees prepare their food by their own. In winter season or when there is a dearth of food resources, they use honey prepared by them as food. In a honeybee nest, there are three types bees. A typical nest contains one queen bee, many male bees and around 40 thousand female bees. Female honeybees are good workers. They lay eggs and also they collect nectar from flowers.

Honeybees leave their nest in search of nectar and they come back to their nest once they collect sufficient amount of nectar. In this process they release Nesonov Pheromones. With the smell of these pheromones, it is easy for other bees to find out a particular flower and particular nectar it has. They release these pheromones at the entrance of their nest too. It helps to identify their own nest and chamber inside the nest. To produce one pound of honey, honeybees travel almost 24 thousand miles and also they collect nectar from three to nine million flowers!

Inside the nest, honeybees swallow nectar and again release outside from mouth. In this process their saliva is mixed in nectar. This process of taking nectar inside pancreas and releasing outside continues till raw nectar becomes a particular solution.   All honeybees in the nest carry out this process. Later this particular solution of nectar is stored in several small holes which are present in the nest. They don’t close these holes.

Nectar has water content and natural yeast. This yeast helps in clotting of sugar content in nectar. This process continues in the nest. Water content in nectar evaporates and sugar content increases. Now this solution becomes eatable and called honey and in Sanskrit it is called as “Madhu”.

Honey is mixture of sugar and its compounds. It has glucose, fructose, sucrose, water and carbohydrates. It has vitamins and minerals also.

Honey in Ayurveda : Difference between Natural Raw honey and boiled honey :

Ayurveda says that natural raw honey is medicine. But boiled honey is slow poison. When honey is boiled, some compounds in it act as slow poison. Natural raw honey contains minerals, vitamins, enzymes, amino acids and carbohydrates. When we boil honey some of these compounds will be destroyed and produces poisonous enzymes. Boiled honey is harmful to blood veins. It causes swelling in blood veins thus causing problems in blood circulation to the body.   So we should stay away from boiled honey. While buying honey, make sure that is natural raw honey and not boiled one. Unfortunately, honey what we get in the market is boiled honey.

Ayurveda also says that we should not give raw natural honey to babies below eighteen months and also to those who have weak immune system.

Honey as medicine :

1. If you have ulcer mix little haldi to a spoon of honey and apply it to affected area.
2. If you have high blood pressure and cholesterol, add one table spoon of honey and one table spoon of lemon juice to a cup of hot water and drink daily in the morning. Cholesterol level in the body will come down.
3. Honey acts as good antiseptic for wounds. It is good anti bacterial also.
4. If you have cold and cough, have one tablespoon of honey daily. It reduces the cough.
5. If you have blocked nose, have one tablespoon of honey and one tablespoon of ginger juice twice daily.
6. If you have anxiety, mix one tablespoon of honey to orange juice and drink it twice daily. It controls anxiety.

Honeybee Farming :

Many farmers are depending on honeybee farming. Government also support and gives many facilities to honeybee farming. Many farmers do honeybee farming as side activity also. Some people do honeybee farming for their habit. Honey always has a very good demand.

February – May months are best for honeybee farming. Because varieties of flower will bloom during Feb – May. Once rainy season starts, it is very difficult for bees to collect sufficient amount of nectar due to frequent change in the weather. And also quality of honey, which is produced in rainy season, will not be good.

• Written by Chetana Hegde.
• In category Food.
• 14 years ago.

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