20 Interesting Facts About Honey

Many people love honey, although there are those who can’t stand it. However, this product is incredibly beneficial, and that’s undeniable. Some people, though, cannot consume it due to individual health conditions. For most people, however, fragrant and aromatic honey is very much to their liking.

Facts About Honey:

1. Under the right conditions, honey can be stored for thousands of years without spoiling. For example, archaeologists have found sealed amphorae with honey in ancient Egyptian tombs, and this honey was still edible.
2. Honey is a powerful natural preservative. In fact, the body of Alexander the Great was immersed in honey to preserve it on its journey back to Greece after his death. In ancient times, honey was often used to coat meat and fish to prevent spoilage.
3. It was also a key ingredient in the most commonly used embalming mixtures for mummies in Ancient Egypt.
4. On average, a single beehive collects between 20 to 50 kilograms of honey per year. However, beekeepers take no more than half of this, as the bees would otherwise starve to death.
5. The most expensive honey in the world, Life Mel, is produced in limited quantities in Israel.
6. Dishonest sellers often dilute honey by adding water, starch, or other ingredients.
7. Honey is 1.5 to 2 times more nutritious than most types of meat. However, nuts are still twice as nutritious as honey.
8. It contains a large amount of flower pollen, making it unsuitable for most people with allergies.
9. Although beekeeping in Siberia only began to develop on an industrial scale in the last century, more honey is now produced there than anywhere else in the country.
10. Heating honey to high temperatures causes the beneficial substances in it to break down. Therefore, adding it to very hot tea for its health benefits makes no sense, except for the flavor.
11. A single bee would have to fly over 450,000 kilometers (11 times the length of the Earth’s equator) to gather 1 kilogram of honey.
12. Natural honey has powerful anti-inflammatory properties and is widely used in traditional medicine.
13. Ancient archaeological finds indicate that our distant ancestors were consuming honey as far back as 15,000 years ago.
14. In Ancient Greece, people believed that eating honey helped one live a very long life.
15. Today, China produces the most honey in the world annually.
16. Eating honey in excessive quantities is harmful to dental health.
17. The human body absorbs honey almost 100%.
18. This product contains about 300 different substances, all of which are beneficial to varying degrees.
19. In 1985, Peruvian border guards seized a batch of honey from Ecuador after discovering a high cocaine content in it. It turned out that Ecuadorian drug dealers had intentionally placed beehives near coca fields to smuggle the drug across the border.
20. African bees do not produce honey because there is no winter in their habitat, so they have no need to store food.