Honey Bees and Honey Flashcards
How can honey be adulterated?
- Sugars and sugar syrup
- Innapropriate antibiotic treatment
- Production
- Origin mislabelling
- Water added
What causes honey to crystallise?
Honey with more glucose then fructose crystallises
When are beehives active and why?
How do bees survive when not active?
What are the different bees in a hive?
Active hives only between spring and autumn when food is available
Over winter the queen and workers reduce their metabolic activity and survive on the honey reserves they have produced- needs to be replaced if humans take it (adulteration)
Bees-
one queen, thousands of workers (females), hundreds of drones (males)
Describe the lifecycle of normal bees?
Starts as eff born from a bee at bottom of wells, develops into a larva, pupa then adult
21 days for workers
12 days for drones
foraging worker bees work to death
What are the products of beekeeping?
Honey- clear, soft set, single source, monofloral
Wax
Royal jelly
Pollen
Propolis
Bee venom
How is an OV involved in honey production and labelling?
Export
Import of honey, royal jelly
Honey regulations-2015
Honey comp cannot be imported
British honey importers and packers association code of practice
What is the UK/EU definition of honey?
The natural sweet substance produced by Apis mellifera bees from:
- Nectar of plants
- Secretions of living plants
- Excretions of plant-sucking insects on living parts of plants (honeydew)
Bees collect, combine and transfer with specific substances of their own deposit, dehydrate, store and leave in honey combs
What is the compositional criteria in honey regulations 2015?
- Honey consists essentially of different sugars, predominately fructose and glucose, as well as other substances such as organic acids, enzymes and solid particles derived from honey collection
- The colour varies from nearly colourless to dark brown
- Consistency can be fluid, viscous or partly to completely crystalised
- Flavour, and aroma can vary depending on plant of origin
- No food ingredient has been added including additives
- No other additions have been made to the honey
- Must as far as possible be free from organic or inorganic matters foreign
According to the Honey regulations 2015, what should honey not contain etc?
What does this not apply to?
Must not:
- Have any foreign tastes or odours
- Have begun to ferment
- Have an artificially changed acidity
- Have been heated in such a way that the natural enzymes have been destroyed or significantly inactivated
Doesn’t apply to bakers honey
No pollen or constituent of honey can be removed except where this is unavoidable in the removal of foreign inorganic or organic matter
Unless filtered
Describe the honey production process?
- Collected by the bee in the crop which becomes enlarged
- Transported to the beehive, transferred to workers and stored in the honeycomb where the water content is reduced from 70% to 20% then capped with wax
(nectar->honey) - Harvesting
- Traditional harvest when all cells on a frame capped- some 75%
- Shake test or refractometer to test water content
- Different collecting methods- on the honey comb, centrifuge, pressing
- Filtration after mild heating- under 40 degrees, removes debris from honeycomb and other contaminants
- Pasteurisation and ultrafiltration
How is honey pasteurised?
Why is honey ‘ripened’?
What is the purpose of microcrystalisation?
Extracted and cleaned using course filter
Flash heating to a high temperature then super filtered and quickly cooled
Will last 9 months in the store without granulating- little pollen
Honey is ripened after filtration to stand and ripen- this removes the air trapped in it during filtration before bottling
Microcrystalisation- helps avoid the formation of large crystals that eventually are solid
Why should honey not be overheated?
When honey is overheated- hexose sugars lose water and form HMF
HMF are genotoxic, mutagenic, carcinogenic, DNA-damaging
Used as an indicator of quality- downgraded to bakers honey
How is honey quality categorised?
Diastase- enzyme in honey that is denatured by heat
Pollen-
monofloral- most pollen from one plant
regional- pollen from plants in that region
Caramel- added to give ‘right colour’- adulteration
Start grains- adultered with corn syrup
How is honey labelled?
Name or trade name
Country of countries of origin
Any special storage conditions
Best- before date
Lot- batch mark
Weight
Filtered honey needs to be labelled with a nutrition declaration of energy, fat, saturated, carbs and sugars
Controlled by Honey England regulations 2015
Country of origin labelling from 1 October 2022
What are the notifiable diseases of bees?
What are in the UK?
Acarapisosis of honey bees
American foulbrood of honey bees
European foulbrood of honey bees
Small hive beetle infestation
Tropilaelaps infestation of honey bees
Varroosis of honey bees
In UK-
EFB, AFB, Topilaelap mites, small hive beetle, varoosis
What causes Acarapisosis of honey bees?
What does it cause?
Acarine or isle of white disease in UK
Caused by white Acarapis woodi
Found in the trachea
Reduced bees lifespan
No major problem in UK but no treatment- problem in USA
What causes American foulbrood?
How does the hive appear?
What is done if present?
Paenibacillus larvae
Pepper-pot brood pattern, sunken grease or perforated capping, dark scales-difficult to remove from cells
If present bees and brood destroyed by incineration and fire to disinfect the hive
What causes European foulbrood?
How does the brood appear?
How is it treated?
Melissococcus plutonius
Erratic brood pattern
Twisted larvae with creamy-white guts visible
Melted down, yellowed larvae
Sour odour
Treatment-
under direction of bee inspector not vet in UK
‘shook swarm husbandry method’
Oxytetracycline treatment
Colonies may be destroyed
What is this and what is the risk in the UK?
Aethina tumida- Small hive beetle infection
Breeding in the hive and destroying the brood
Not in the UK but there is a risk
What mite can infest hives that is not present in the UK?
Tropilaelaps clarae and T. koenigerum
Look and develop like Varroa- less destructive
What causes Varoosis?
What does it feed on?
Describe its life cycle?
How is it controlled?
Varroa mite
Feeds on haemolymph or larvae or adult
Life cycle- adult female enters a brood cell just before capped over, feeds on immature bee and lays eggs, mature females leave when bee emerges, males and immature female die
In winter when brood rearing is restricted, mites over-winter and survive on the bodies of bees
Control-
management- biotechnical methods
Chemical controls- varroacides
Whar are the different varroa treatments?
- Tau flucalinate- apistan- strips in the brood chamber for 42 days
- Flumethrin- strips in the brood chamber for 42 days
- Amitraz
- Thymol
- Formic acid
- Oxalic acid- burns mouth parts
- Formic acid and oxalic acid
What are residues left from hive products and what are there MRLs?
Varroa treatments-
formic acid- honey 0 days, wait until after treatment
Oxalic acid- no MRL required
Amitraz- 200um/kg
Coumafos- 100ug/kg
Flumethrin- no MRL
Tau fluvalinate- no MRL required
Oxytetracycline- not specified for honey as no UK authorised product
Systemic plant pesticides- neonnicotinoids
Accumulation of lipid-soluble compounds in wax
What causes nosemosis?
How is it controlled?
What is sacbrood?
What is chalkbrood?
Nosemosis- nosema apid
Protozoan causing dysentry, contolled with biosecurity
Sacbrood- viral, no treatments, not detrimental
Chalkbrood- ascophera apis, fungal disease
What is royal jelly?
How is it harvested?
Secreted by nurse bees
Fed to all larvae for a few days, new queens longer
Harvested with artificial queen cells, workers feed them and then scooped out
What is pollen/bee bread?
How and why is it harvested?
Food source- protein/amino acids
Collected into pollen baskets on legs of bees
In honet- oral dose reduced allergy
Mixed with nectar or honey to be stored in the comb as bee bread
Harvested to be eaten with a pollen trap:
Pollen brushed out of pollen sacs with narrow entrance
3mm grid filters out larger bits of debris and stops bees getting pollen
Dry, clean and store
May catch varroa mites, drones may get stuck
What is propolis?
How is it collected?
What is it used for?
Tree resin collected by the bees
Collected by flexible mesh on top of frames
Remove and freeze and goes brittle
Soluble in alcohol- tincture
What are the risks to humans with honey?
Infant botulism-
Botulism is a very rare but life-threatening condition caused by toxins produced by clostridium botulinum bacteria
These toxins attach the nervous system and cause paralysis
Infant botulinism- babies swallow a spored C. botulinum in contaminated honey
Honey from toxic plants-
From nectar or flowers poisonous to humans
Symptoms depend on source of toxins
