How to determine the quality of honey at home: methods. How to identify natural or fake honey

Before purchasing sweet amber, it is recommended to read information about how honey is counterfeited. Since this product is expensive, I don’t want to pay for an imitation at all. Knowledge of the characteristics and properties of natural honey will help you choose a quality product that will delight you not only with its taste characteristics, but also with its medicinal properties.

It is necessary to understand in more detail what methods exist for falsifying honey and how to independently identify an unnatural product.

Popular methods of falsification

As soon as the sugar industry began to gain momentum, honey adulteration ceased to be a unique phenomenon. Fraudsters use many methods to fool the buyer, who does not know how to distinguish a real product from a fake.

The most popular types of imitation bee honey:

synthetic;
body;
immature;
sugar.

Synthetic honey is produced thanks to the chemical industry. Today there are many flavoring and aroma additives that create the appearance of taste and smell. Fraudsters add them to molasses and get honey, which is very similar to the natural product. However, it is important to note that flavoring technology is not perfect. Those who regularly consume high-quality honey know what a natural product should be like in color and taste, so it will not be difficult for them to taste synthetics. Most unscrupulous producers are afraid of criminal liability, so if you buy honey in a supermarket or store, don’t be lazy to read the ingredients. As a rule, the presence of synthetic additives is indicated in small print.

Body honey is found on the shelves very often. To prepare it, unscrupulous beekeepers use a natural base and dilute it with sugar syrup. Such a product, unlike a synthetic one, is more difficult to determine by its taste characteristics. You can often find honey from last year or the year before on sale under the guise of fresh. It is simply heated to 70°C, sometimes diluted with sugar syrup. Then the solid honey becomes liquid and does not become sugared for some time. Naturally, this product cannot harm your health, but you should not expect any benefits from it. If honey is heated to temperatures above 60°C, then all its biologically active molecules will lose their physiological value, and proteins will denature.

Unripe honey is also not uncommon. When bees make a sweet product, they fill the honeycomb with nectar. Over time, it evaporates and turns into high-quality honey. Fraudsters take advantage of this feature of honey production and sell a product that has not yet formed. It contains more water and has a thinner consistency. Naturally, such a product is larger in volume, which is what unscrupulous beekeepers take advantage of, making money not on quality, but on quantity.

Sugar honey today can be considered as a separate type of this imitation. Beekeepers often practice feeding bees on their own. They simply do not open the hives, adding sugar syrup to the trays themselves. The benefits of such honey are zero.

This method of obtaining sweet amber is called expressive. Sometimes, instead of regular sugar syrup, beekeepers feed bees extracts of medicinal herbs, medicines, milk, vegetable juices and various vitamins.

Production of artificial honey

Artificial honey can be obtained by acid hydrolysis of cane sugar. For this, citric or other organic acid is used. Manufacturers can replace cane sugar with beet sugar, grape juice, watermelon or melon. After mixing all the components, the evaporation process begins, which lasts until the mass reaches the desired consistency. If honey is made artificially from watermelon juice, then it is called nardek, from melon nectar - bekmez.

This product can also be obtained at home. To do this, squeeze out the pulp of fruits or vegetables and evaporate it in an open container until the mixture becomes thick. When processed, artificial honey turns yellowish. Manufacturers claim that the amount of glucose and fructose in this product is the same as in the natural one. However, it is worth noting that artificial honey is distinguished by its specific aroma and taste. It contains more carbohydrates and minerals. To make it resemble a natural product, a small amount of fresh honey or honey essence is sometimes added to the mixture. Buckwheat, linden and coriander honey are used to enhance the taste. The desired shade can be achieved by adding a decoction of saffron, St. John's wort or regular tea to the mixture.

"Secrets" of May honey

May honey is in great demand among buyers. It is not bitter and does not crystallize for a long time, and its use for medicinal purposes gives a positive effect. But it is this product that is most often falsified by scammers. Experienced beekeepers know that few people dare to collect sweet amber at the end of spring. Rarely does anyone agree to do pumping, because May honey is food for future brood. It is found in honeycombs under the guise of flower nectar and pollen. Without these substances, bees will grow and develop poorly.

If the beekeeper takes the risk of pumping out honey in the spring, you should forget about the big autumn pumping. The bees will be lethargic and weak, causing many tens of kilograms of honey to be lost. Only those who have large apiaries can afford May pumping, and even then not from all hives. Often, May honey is diluted from last year or artificial. You need to pay attention to the smell of spring bee product. It should not be as aromatic as linden or buckwheat. It is recommended to buy sweet amber only from trusted sellers.

It is also important to pay attention to the mass of the bee product. As a rule, 1 liter should weigh 1.4 kg. If you have the opportunity to weigh sweet amber, don't be shy. This will help identify unscrupulous sellers who, under the guise of a beautiful sweet mass, sell counterfeit goods.

How to determine the quality of a bee product?

Falsified honey can be recognized in several ways. There are even special chemical pencils that allow you to determine whether a product is being offered to you or not. Simply apply a thin layer of sweet amber onto paper or your finger and run a pencil over it. You can dip a pencil in a container of honey. If the product contains impurities (for example, sugar or excess water), a trace will remain from the instrument.

Blotting paper is often used instead of a pencil. You need to put a small amount of sweet amber on it and wait a few minutes. If a watery spot appears on the back of the paper, this is a sign that the product has been tampered with.

But you are unlikely to carry such devices with you to the market. Therefore, when buying a bee product from your hands, take a close look at what color it is, ask to take a few grams to sample. A high-quality product must correspond in taste and aroma to its variety. The color of the nectar is also important. Buckwheat honey will never be light, but if it is too white, it is better not to buy it. Maybe it's sugary. The dark brown color of the product may indicate honeydew honey. The melted bee product usually tastes like caramel.

As for consistency, natural sweet amber should be wound onto a spoon with sweet threads at a temperature of 20°C. It is better not to buy liquid, because such a consistency indicates its immaturity. This product will not be stored for a long time due to the large amount of water in it. He will simply start wandering. But be careful when buying honey in winter. There's no way it could be fresh this time of year. If you are offered to buy liquid honey in December-February, feel free to refuse. This is a heated or diluted product.

When you buy honey, ask the seller to stir it. If at the same time you feel that it is not viscous, and gas bubbles appear on the surface, this is fake honey. In some cases, such a product may have a sour smell and burnt taste. Most likely, they tried to dilute the honey with sugar syrup.

Always ask where and when the honey was harvested if you buy the product at the market. It is not advisable to purchase sweet amber from apiaries located near highways. Such a product may contain high concentrations of lead and other substances that come from exhaust gases. With pollen they end up in sweet nectar, which is why the medical effect of the product can be radically opposite. It’s not as scary that the seller dilutes the bee product with water or sugar syrup as the fact that it may contain toxic substances.

How to identify impurities yourself?

To determine impurities in a bee product, it is enough to use simple advice from experienced beekeepers. The easiest way is to put sweet amber in a transparent container, then pour distilled water into it. A fake is indicated by sediment at the bottom when all the honey has dissolved. A quality product should not have any sediment.

To identify starch or flour, the bee product must be mixed with water in a ratio of 1:2, then add 3-5 drops of iodine or Lugol to the resulting solution. If there is flour or starch in the product, the solution will turn blue.

Starch syrup is a mixture of crystalline sugar and cool water. It can be determined by the appearance of the product. The main features are the absence of crystallization and stickiness. You can also recognize starch syrup using water and alcohol. To do this, you need to mix sweet amber with distilled water (1:3), then add 1/4 part of alcohol (96%). The mixture must be shaken and allowed to brew. If there is starch syrup, it will become milky in color. Over time, dextrin (a semi-liquid transparent mass) may settle at the bottom of the container.

Sweet amber can also be falsified using regular sugar or beet molasses. The presence of sugar syrup is also indicated by the yellowish-white precipitate that precipitates after adding methyl alcohol to the honey-water solution.

An admixture of invert sugar can also be detected. But this process is more complex. To do this, 5 g of bee product must be thoroughly ground with ether. This substance is capable of dissolving compounds resulting from the breakdown of fructose. This ethereal solution must be filtered into a container and evaporated to dryness. To the remainder, add 2-3 drops of a solution of resorcinol in concentrated hydrochloric acid (1%). If the residue turns orange or cherry red, the sweet amber contains invert sugar.

Sweet amber must crystallize in any case. If this does not happen, most likely potato molasses was added to the product. The admixture of honeydew honey is determined by adding lime water to an aqueous solution of honey. To ensure accurate results, it is recommended to mix water, bee product and lime liquid in proportions 1:1:2. If there are impurities of honeydew honey, brown flakes should precipitate.

Methods that involve the use of additional substances can be used at home. It is recommended to read the ingredients directly in the store and pay attention to the color and thickness of the product. If you buy sweet amber secondhand, you should definitely ask when and where it was collected. There is no need to remain silent about counterfeit products. If you find any, contact the consumer protection authorities.

Fake honey has been on sale very often lately. And it doesn’t matter whether you buy it in a store or from a beekeeper. For the sake of money, many are ready to resort to meanness and even sacrifice the health of other people.

When creating counterfeit honey, various components of dubious quality are used. But those who really care about themselves and their loved ones should know how to choose the right honey. We are happy to help you. Here are some ways to spot fake honey. Choose the one that suits you!

How to distinguish natural honey from fake

Real honey, in addition to its sweet taste, should be slightly bitter and cause a sore throat. When buying honey at the market, be sure to try it.
Be sure to smell the honey. It should have a delicate floral scent. The fake one often has no smell, or, on the contrary, it is too bright and intrusive.
Color is not the last thing you need to pay attention to. Unnaturally light honey is produced when bees are fed sugar syrup or molasses. Such a product will not benefit the body.
How to recognize unnatural honey at home
1. If the honey is natural and mature, then scooping it up with a spoon and swirling it, it will be wound in layers with a ribbon. And if it drips from a spoon, then you shouldn’t take it.
2. Dissolve a tablespoon of honey in a glass of water. The water will become cloudy, but without sediment. In the presence of impurities, a precipitate always forms.
3. To determine whether there is flour and starch in the product, add a drop of iodine to honey diluted with water. If the solution turns blue, then these additives are present.
4. You can add a little vinegar essence. If the honey sizzles, it means there is chalk in it.
5. Place a drop of honey on the tip of a match and light it. If the honey ignites, it means it is natural.
Everyone should know how to distinguish natural honey from counterfeit honey. After all, this product is used not only to add flavor to dishes and drinks, but also to boost immunity.

Many people only know about honey that it is a very healthy product, it is made by bees and collected by beekeepers. And the fact that there is a lot of honey in Russia, so everyone and everyone is selling it. In many retail outlets this bee product is sold with the label “natural”, which is not always true.

Very often on store shelves you can find a lot of fake honey or honey diluted with various impurities. So how to distinguish natural honey from fake?

What should real honey be like?

Honey with a liquid or thick consistency is natural, freshly pumped, and not overheated. Real bee honey has a pleasant floral aroma. Liquid honey is clover, fireweed or white acacia honey. This happens in July-August, immediately after pumping. After two months, the honey begins to crystallize.
Crystallized is real honey. Crystallization is a natural process that does not in any way affect the content of useful substances in honey. The exception is acacia or chestnut honey, these are varieties that do not crystallize at all; heather honey, bypassing crystallization, turns into jelly.

Attention! It must be remembered that adulterated honey does not crystallize.

Fake honey

Fraudsters prepare counterfeits in various ways. For example, sugar is hydrolyzed with acetic or citric acid. Or watermelon, grape or melon juices are evaporated, bringing to the desired thickness. The resulting mixture is very reminiscent of honey in smell and color, in the presence of fructose and glucose in it, but it does not contain the active components that natural honey has.

When purchasing, be sure to pay attention to the packaging. As a rule, when packaged in small quantities, honey heats up above 40 degrees and loses its beneficial properties.

You need to be very careful when purchasing honey with pollen. This is a very expensive product. Pollen retains its beneficial properties for only six months. And no one knows what pollen is added to honey. It is correct to buy pollen separately, granular, not diluted in any way.

When creating adulterations, components such as sugar, molasses, chalk, starch, flour, gelatin, etc. are added to honey to increase the mass of the product.

Overheated natural honey that has lost its nutritional value is considered counterfeit.

Unripe honey is also not real honey. The maturity of honey is related to its viscosity and moisture. Unripe honey foams - this is a characteristic sign of the presence of excess water in its composition. Such honey quickly sours, its taste deteriorates, and its nutritional qualities decrease. In mature honey, the water content should be no more than 20%.

How to distinguish honey from fake?

Folk methods for distinguishing natural honey from fake:

First, dip a spoon or wooden stick into the liquid honey, rotate it a little and lift it up. If the honey is real, then it will stretch as a long thread, which, when broken, will form a turret. The fake one will just run and drip.
Secondly, you can recognize real honey by its smell. Fake honey has no smell, but real honey has a pleasant floral-meadow aroma.
Thirdly, a remarkable indicator of the naturalness of a bee product is taste. If the honey is real, then it irritates the mucous membrane of the pharynx and causes soreness. After swallowing, irritation increases slightly. If honey is diluted with sucrose, then this sensation is reduced and if completely adulterated, it is completely absent.
Fourthly, you need to know what honey should be like at different times of the year. If liquid is sold in the spring, then it is a fake or it has been heat-treated.
Another way to distinguish real honey: stir a spoonful of honey in boiled water. Real, genuine honey will dissolve completely in water, a sediment will remain from the diluted honey, or a white film will appear on the surface of the water.
Sixth method. To select ripe honey and not confuse it with unripe, you can wrap liquid honey on a spoon and lift it a little while continuing to rotate. In this case, unripe honey will flow from the spoon, and mature honey will spool up.
How else can you tell if honey is real? Visually. Fake honey is transparent, while natural honey is cloudy due to the presence of proteins and becomes even more cloudy during crystallization.
Another way to find out whether honey is fake or not is to evaluate crystallization. If, when the crystals fall out in the jar, delamination is visible and uneven layer-by-layer crystallization occurs, then this is a fake.
Honey is often diluted with starch. There is a simple way to distinguish real bee honey from diluted or fake one: dissolve honey in water and add a few drops of iodine. If there is an admixture of starch, then it is fake.

Conclusion

Still, traditional methods cannot give an accurate idea of whether the product on the shelf is really a natural beekeeping product or a fake. Only laboratory tests can tell you how to correctly distinguish honey from counterfeit honey. There are currently about thirty of them. These are various tests for the presence of sucrose in honey, reactions to dextrins, qualitative reactions to the presence of gelatin and many other studies.

When going to the market for a sweet bee product, be prepared for the fact that you will come across an unscrupulous seller. Experienced beekeepers know that there are a lot of scammers in the honey business these days. Chasing easy money, they sell fakes to naive buyers. At first glance, such a product looks very attractive. In fact, it turns out that it is full of chemical additives, thickeners, flavor enhancers, and so on.

Fraudsters go to great lengths to attract buyers and force them to take more “fake” honey. It even happens that there are no foreign impurities in the nectar, the entire product is exclusively from the hive. But the beekeeper fed the bees with sugar syrup, and what do we get in the end? As you understand, there will be no benefit from such a product. According to unofficial data, about 80% of goods on the bee products market are counterfeit.

What should a common man do, who would be happy to treat himself to a healthy sweet, but is afraid of running into scammers? After all, it turns out that even when buying honey directly from beekeepers, we are not immune from deception. There is no need to despair and be upset: beekeepers know a lot of ways to recognize real, natural honey. By adopting them, you will be more confident and will not let yourself be deceived.

Libra to the rescue

As you know, honey is not sold by weight, but measured in liters. Therefore, some sellers use a trick and simply dilute the products. Here scales will come to our aid: a liter jar of natural bee product will weigh 1420 grams, while a fake will have less weight. It's all about water content: real nectar collected from plant flowers ripens in honeycombs, after which its water content will be no more than 20%.

You probably already guessed that fake honey diluted with syrup will contain more water, so the weight of the finished product will be less. Before buying, ask the seller to put the goods on the scales, or better yet, use your own.

Taste and color

There is a saying that there are no comrades according to taste. Beekeepers only partly agree with her: the taste characteristics and color of honey can be very different and this depends on the food supply. Nectar collected from acacia will have a subtle yellow tint; buckwheat has brown tones; the product collected from forbs will sparkle with green and yellow colors.

What should you be wary of when buying honey? Too bright, unnatural colors of the product. Remember that this is a marketing ploy, the purpose of which is to force you to make a purchase, and in this case there can be no talk of naturalness and benefits. The same applies to the aroma: an unnatural and very pronounced smell indicates that flavoring agents were used. Flower honey does not need amplifiers; it is fragrant on its own.

However, the complete absence of odor indicates that the product is not real. If the bees ate syrup, then where did the herbal aromas come from? So, approach the purchase of bee sweets responsibly, because your health depends on it.

Video “How to choose honey?”

You will learn even more secrets about how to distinguish natural honey from a fake from the following video (author – Everything will be fine).

Natural bee honey is a rather expensive product. Some rare varieties of honey, such as chestnut, orange, and willow, are especially valued and have the highest price. The rarity of a natural product also dictates its price; the price is correspondingly higher, and with this the likelihood of profit from unscrupulous sellers, and sometimes simply scammers, increases.

We should not forget that there is such a thing as artificial honey. This is a cheap sugar syrup with added dyes and flavors. This honey is usually added to various confectionery products. Artificial honey is not dangerous, but it is absolutely useless, so read the text on the package carefully, you need to know what you are buying.

From one kilogram of natural honey, scoundrels can make several kilograms of diluted honey and sell it at the price of natural honey. To avoid the expensive purchase of low-quality honey, there are several simple ways to distinguish natural honey from counterfeit honey. You will not 100% expose the seller using these methods, but at least with a high degree of probability, it will be possible to determine whether you purchased high-quality honey from a private seller.

How honey is faked

Honey has been counterfeited since the sugar industry began to develop. The first fake honey was regular sugar mixed with water and flavorings. Usually such fake honey is mixed with real honey to make it more difficult to detect. Sometimes substances harmful to human health were found in such mixtures. Nowadays, deception technologies have leapt forward. Now, molasses, invert sugar (sugar syrup made from equal parts of glucose and fructose), sucrose, starch and various other fillers are used for counterfeits. Counterfeits have reached such a level that they are difficult to detect even in laboratory conditions.

The state has taken upon itself to protect consumers from low-quality honey and, in principle, buying honey in a trusted store where everything is in order with the documents, it is unlikely to run into a fake. But a lot of honey is bought from private individuals who are not subject to any inspection. But impurities in honey, not to mention the fact that they reduce the benefits of this product, can cause direct harm to your health.

Counterfeits of honey are divided into:

1) Natural honey with the addition of various additives to increase weight and viscosity
2) Honey made from products of non-nectar origin
3) Artificial honey

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

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

Often beekeepers pump out honey during honey collection, without waiting for it to ripen, due to a lack of honeycombs. The water content in such honey is sometimes twice the norm, it is little enriched with enzymes and sucrose, and quickly sours.

To determine the maturity of honey, it is heated to 20 degrees, stirring with a spoon. Then the spoon is taken out and started to rotate. Ripe honey wraps around her. It may become sugary over time, this is normal. If you want to return it to its previous state, heat it slightly in a water bath. But sometimes this provokes further souring.

Test for the naturalness of honey

Using simple tests you can determine whether honey is natural. 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. Flour or starch is added to honey. so that honey diluted with water remains thick.

If the solution hisses when adding vinegar essence, there is chalk in the honey.

If a white precipitate forms in a 5-10% aqueous solution of honey when adding a small amount of lapis (silver nitrate), sugar has been added.

How to determine the quality of honey

By color

Each type of honey has its own color, unique to it. Flower honey is light yellow, linden honey is amber, ash honey is transparent, like water, buckwheat honey has different shades of brown. Pure honey without impurities is usually transparent, no matter what color it is.

Honey, which contains additives (sugar, starch, other impurities), is cloudy, and if you look closely, you can find sediment in it. But remember, there is a catch here too, clear honey is either fresh honey or melted honey! If they try to sell you pure, transparent honey outside of the honey-bearing season, it is most likely melted or even fake. Over time, honey can become candied, this is not a big deal, it practically does not lose its beneficial properties over time. But if candied honey is melted incorrectly (quickly, at an elevated temperature), such honey will be at least incomplete.

By aroma

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

By viscosity

Take honey for testing by lowering a thin stick into the container. If this is real honey, then it follows the stick as a long continuous thread, and when this thread is broken, it will completely descend, forming a tower, a pagoda on the surface of the honey, which will then slowly disperse.

Fake honey will behave like glue: it will flow abundantly and drip down from the stick, forming splashes.

Photo: natural honey, thin continuous thread

By consistency

In real honey it is thin and delicate. Honey is easily rubbed between your fingers and absorbed into the skin, which cannot be said about a fake. Adulterated honey has a rough texture; when rubbed, lumps remain on your fingers.

Before buying honey in reserve at the market, take the product you like from 2-3 regular sellers. To start, 100 grams each. Do the recommended quality tests at home and only then buy it for future use from the same sellers.