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 currently a lot of scammers in the honey business. Chasing easy money, they sell fake buyers to naive buyers. Such a product at first glance looks very attractive. In fact, it turns out that it is full of chemical additives, thickeners, flavor enhancers and more.

Fraudsters go to great lengths to attract a buyer and force him to take more “fake” honey. It even happens that there are no extraneous impurities in the nectar; the whole 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 the goods on the bee products market are falsification.

But what about a simple layman who would be happy to treat himself to a useful sweetness, but be afraid to run into scammers? After all, it turns out that even when buying honey directly from beekeepers, we are not immune from deception. Do not despair and get upset: beekeepers know a lot of ways to recognize real, natural honey. Taking them into service, you will be more confident and do not let yourself be deceived.

Libra to help

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

You probably 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, but rather use your own.

On taste and color

There is a saying that there is no companion for the taste and color. Beekeepers agree with it only partially: the taste characteristics and color of honey can be very different and it depends on the food supply. Nectar collected from acacia will have a subtle yellow tint; brown tones are inherent in buckwheat; a product collected from herbs will sparkle with green and yellow colors.

What should alert you when buying honey? Too bright, unnatural product colors. Remember that this is a marketing move, 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 aroma: an unnatural and very pronounced smell suggests that flavorings were used. Flower honey does not need amplifiers, it is fragrant in itself.

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

Video "How to choose honey?"

You will learn even more secrets on how to distinguish natural honey from a fake from the next video (author - Everything will be fine).

It’s easy to buy high-quality natural honey if you know how to choose it. You can avoid buying a fake bee product by mastering a few tricks. About methods of how to distinguish real honey from fake and what methods to use for this, read in our material.

Any buyer should be able to recognize real honey and be able to distinguish it from a fake. Sometimes it happens that focusing only on the appearance in the bank, a person buys a product, and when he arrives home, for a long time he does not notice the substitution. A natural bee elixir must comply with several required points. Which ones, see below:

1. First of all, it is necessary to determine whether there is a persistent smell. The aroma coming from the can always tell you whether the product in front of you is genuine or fake. Honey, in which there are no syrups, which are not boiled or mixed with various additives, smells like honeycombs from a beehive - wax, nectar, pollen, sweetness, and honey itself.
2. Natural sweetness is stored for a very long time without changing the taste, while fake goods almost always deteriorate, either start to ferment, or exfoliate and acquire an ugly forked texture.
3. The consistency of liquid bee gold is always quite thick, even if the mass has been collected recently. Too liquid texture indicates that the substance was diluted or collected too early.
4. The present condition is delicious, does not deteriorate after crystallization. Different grades can thicken in different ways, the whole thing is in storage conditions. Crystals can be either very small, or quite large. But there should not be too large sugar "snowflakes" in the bee mass.
5. The weight of mature honey is at least 1.4 kilograms per liter.

How not to confuse with a fake?

So, how to determine that this is a falsified product? Pay attention to how honey is in the jar. This product must not be delaminated. The homogeneity of the mass without sediment and foam, the uniform color and the absence of large bubbles inside the jar suggests that the honey was stored in the right conditions.

Do not be afraid to taste or even rub the mass between your fingers. A real treat sticks well and forms an adhesive film, but the fake leaves a feeling of excess moisture.

Honey should not be sprayed when dropped from a whisk or spoon. To distinguish a watery substance from a fake is simple - drop a small drop on a napkin. If a wet trace forms near the spot, the mass is clearly diluted. A drop of real goodies will keep its shape for a long time. This method is good for home use.

When you try honey, scoop a spoon or a special whisk from the bottom of the jar or other container in which it is poured. So you can find out if there is a candied layer at the bottom (if the container is opaque). If the bottom is thickened and the top is liquid, it’s probably not a fake in front of you, but a mixture of several varieties.

Taking such a product is also not worth it, since mixing old, more mature and fresh honey can lead to a deterioration in taste. Thus, in order to distinguish a good product from a fake, you will also need ordinary observation.

If you cannot distinguish a fake from the original yourself, use the advice of experienced beekeepers.

Video "We distinguish a real product from a fake"

Expert advice on how to distinguish natural honey, not allowing the purchase of counterfeit. These recommendations and secrets will help you buy a really worthwhile product, the taste of which is second to none!

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

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

From one kilogram of natural honey, the bastards can "pick up" a few kilograms of diluted and sell 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 fake. Not by 100% you will expose the seller in these ways, but at least with a high degree of probability it will be possible to determine whether you purchased high-quality honey from the seller of the private trader.

How to fake honey

They began to fake honey since the sugar industry began to develop. The first fakes of honey - it was a regular sugar mixed with water and flavorings. Usually, such a fake is mixed with real honey, for more difficult detection. Sometimes substances harmful to human health were found in such mixtures. Nowadays, cheating technology has spurred ahead. Now for the fakes used molasses, invert sugar (sugar syrup from equal proportions of glucose and fructose), sucrose, starch and various other excipients. Counterfeits have reached such a level that they are difficult to detect even in laboratory conditions.

The state took upon itself the protection of 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 individuals who do not undergo any verification. But impurities in honey, not to mention the fact that they reduce the benefits of this product, can cause direct harm to your health.

Honey fakes are divided into:

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

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

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

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

To determine the maturity of honey, it is heated to 20 degrees, stirring with a spoon. Then take out the spoon and begin to rotate. Ripe honey is wrapped around her. From time to time it can be sugared, this is normal. If you want to restore it to its previous state, lightly heat it in a water bath. But sometimes it provokes further souring.

Honey Natural Test

With the help of simple tests, you can determine whether natural honey. 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 the honey diluted with water remains thick.

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

If a white precipitate precipitates in a 5-10 percent aqueous solution of honey when a small amount of lapis (silver nitrate) is added, sugar is added.

How to determine the quality of honey

By color

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

Honey, which contains additives (sugar, starch, other impurities), is unclear, and if you look closely, you can find a precipitate in it. But remember, there is also a catch, transparent honey is either fresh honey or melted honey! If you are trying to sell pure transparent honey outside of the honey season, it is most likely melted, or it is generally a fake. Over time, honey can be sugared, it’s not scary, it practically does not lose useful properties over time. But if the sugared honey is not melted correctly (quickly, at elevated temperature), such honey will be at least not full.

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 a test, having lowered a thin stick in capacity. If this is real honey, then it stretches after the stick with a long continuous thread, and when this thread breaks, it will completely drop, forming a turret on the surface of the honey, a pagoda, which will then slowly disperse.

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

Photo: natural honey, thin continuous thread

Consistency

In real honey, it is thin, delicate. Honey is easily rubbed between the fingers and absorbed into the skin, which can not be said about the fake. In falsified honey, the structure is coarse; when rubbed, lumps remain on the fingers.

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

On August 14, the First Savior was celebrated in Russia, which was also called Medov, - by this day the honeycomb should be filled, and the beekeepers begin to get the contents. In the temples, from this day it was allowed to eat - they made honey cakes, pancakes with poppy seeds and honey, gingerbread and other pastries. Honey fairs in Russia begin in May, when beekeepers begin to extract the first honey. On the beautiful stalls, laden with various jars, you can find honey for any, the most demanding taste. True, sometimes buyers are faced with the fact that for a lot of money they bought not “natural product”, but it, and they can only hope that this honey is not dangerous to health.

For an unscrupulous manufacturer, the most important thing is to increase the mass of the product or to mix in some substance, which should resemble honey as much as possible. Most often, sugar syrup is added to honey. Thus, you can increase the mass and make sweet unripe honey. In addition, starch, beetroot or starch syrup, inverted sugar, sucrose can add - as long as there is enough imagination. We have gathered tips on how to distinguish real honey from fake in everyday conditions.

1) Viscosity test  Natural honey is by no means watery. It must be malleable. Warm the honey to about 20 degrees, stirring with a spoon. Then take out the spoon and begin to rotate it - if it is of normal consistency, then it should be screwed onto the spoon, and not drain. Then see how the honey will flow back into the container - it should slowly go down the hill, forming bubbles on the surface.

2) Newspaper Check  Put a little honey on a piece of paper (a piece of newspaper or toilet paper) - the paper should remain dry. If honey has spread and formed a wet footprint, it means there is water in it.

3) Check on bread  Another test for the presence of water, which should not be, can be done with a piece of bread. It just needs to be dipped in honey for 10 minutes, and then removed. In natural high-quality honey, bread should harden, while in fake honey it will soften.

4) Check with iodine  In order to detect impurities in honey, you will need to conduct a simple experiment. Dilute some honey with water and add a drop of iodine. If the liquid has acquired a blue color, then it contains starch or flour.

5) Verification with vinegar essence  To do this, you also need to make a solution of honey with warm water. If, when adding vinegar essence, the solution hissed, but it contained chalk.

6) Check with a pencil  For the next experiment, you will need a lapis pencil, which can be bought at a pharmacy for less than 150 rubles. Make a 5-10 percent solution of honey and dip a pencil there. If a white precipitate forms, sugar is added to the honey.

7) Check with a chemical pencil  To determine if there are any foreign liquids in the honey, take a chemical pencil and a piece of paper with you to the fair. Smear a small amount of honey on paper and try to write something through a layer of honey with a pencil. If after a few seconds you see an inscription or stains of blue-violet color, it means that water or syrup was added to the delicacy.

8) Wire test Take a wire from a stainless steel, heat it over a fire (you can use a regular lighter) and immerse it in honey. If an adhesive mass sticks to the wire, then this is a fake. If the honey is natural, the wire will remain clean. Anyway, as in the sensational case of combustible cottage cheese in St. Petersburg (journalists checked the quality of the "natural" cottage cheese purchased in the store and found that it could burn for more than 10 minutes), you can try and set honey on fire - you never know . Good honey will simply not burn. A fake can change color, for example, turn brown, melt, begin to emit a caramel or chemical smell.

8) Check for sediment  Stir a spoonful of honey in a glass of warm tea and leave for an hour. If after this a residue remains on the bottom of the glass or on the surface, the quality of your purchase is poor.

9) Checking with ammonia  Mix a little honey with water in a ratio of one to two. Then add a few drops of ammonia and shake the resulting solution. If it becomes brown, it means that starch syrup was mixed in honey.

10) Odor test  Natural honey is always very fragrant. If it is odorless, then most likely it is not natural.

Before you go shopping for honey for the whole year, be puzzled by what varieties are, and what color they differ - this can also play into your hands in search of natural honey. For example, buckwheat honey should be brown, flower honey should be golden yellow, linden honey should be amber, and mustard honey should be cream yellow. The unnaturally white color of honey is an occasion to reflect, because some manufacturers do not export bees to collect nectar, but simply feed the unfortunate creatures with sugar. The resulting honey, of course, does not have any valuable properties.

HOW DO NOT SPOIL HONEY

When purchases are made, remember that honey should not be stored in metal containers. The fact is that the acids contained in honey can oxidize and cause a valuable product to lose some of its beneficial properties and may even lead to poisoning.

If you like to drink tea with honey, do not add honey to boiling water. Already at 60 degrees, the honey structure decays, and it loses its properties. Over time, honey necessarily becomes thick and cloudy, so if the honey purchased in the summer remains liquid and transparent until winter, it is not natural. If the honey has thickened from below and remains liquid above, this means that the honey was collected immature, and such honey can be stored for only a few months.

MEDICAL PROPERTIES OF DIFFERENT HONEY

Linden honey  used as an antipyretic, it has a diaphoretic property. In addition, it is bactericidal and promotes expectoration of sputum.

Buckwheat honey  It is especially appreciated in the treatment and prevention of anemia, with hypo- and vitamin deficiencies, is useful for people predisposed to cardiovascular diseases. Such honey favorably affects the quality of blood and restores the body well after blood loss.

Chestnut honey  good for digestive disorders and, like buckwheat, for problems with the cardiovascular system. In addition, it has an antimicrobial effect.

Boiled honey  useful for the prevention and treatment of colds. It contains a lot of vitamin C.

Flower honey  need to eat women. It is useful for the female reproductive system, used for the prevention and treatment of gynecological diseases. With erosion, ladies are recommended to use sainfoin honey. And during breastfeeding is useful clover honeywhich contributes to the production of milk. This type of honey also has anti-inflammatory, sedative and analgesic effects.

Chestnut honey  useful for men with potency problems. In general, men are advised to buy dark and bitter varieties of honey, for example, buckwheat.

Honey with bee bread (rammed with bees pollen)  has a pronounced immunostimulating effect. It well restores immunity, including after illnesses and operations.

Meadow grass honey  helps with insomnia and headaches.

Maria Al Salhani

From a fake, because today in the market you can buy both high-quality and falsified.

There are so many useful properties of honey that it is simply impossible to list them all. They eat honey, use it in the cosmetic field, with its help they treat the throat and get rid of hematomas, they are used as an additional tool in the fight against many diseases from the simplest to the most terrible.

Naturally, such universality and popularity attracts many scammers and speculators selling low-quality honey. The buyer of honey needs to learn how to distinguish honey from a fake, so as not to get into trouble.

Honey groups

Honey is divided into three groups according to:

• Origin;
• Manufacturing method;
• Taste, color and consistency.

Origin of honey

1. Flower honey  harvested only from nectar of flowers, getting a high-quality, tasty product that has many useful properties.

• If the nectar is collected by a bee 50% from a single plant, it is called monofloral.
• If from different flowers growing in a garden or in a meadow, then honey is   polyphloric.

2.  Honey honey  the bees do not produce from nectar of flowers, but from honey dew (the sweet juice that the leaves secrete) and paddy (excrement in the form of liquid sweet drops of grassy aphids, mealybugs, pureflats). This type of honey is used for processing.

Manufacturing methods

Depending on this parameter, honey happens:

• Gravity flowing from honeycombs;
• Pressed pressed;
• Centrifugal, that is, a pumped out centrifuge.

It is the latter method that is used more often and clear transparent honey is obtained.

Consistency, color and taste

Honey is liquid or thick in consistency. The color varies from light yellowish to brown, depending on the nectar collected by the bees from the flowers.

All types of honey have a sweet taste, but some of the varieties have a specific taste (tobacco, chestnut and willow varieties have a bitter taste, and heather is astringent). Any deviations in the taste of honey indicate its poor quality. Other defects in taste may be due to the presence of impurities. Excessive acidity may be due to the onset of fermentation, the caramel flavor is the result of heating honey, bitterness is improper storage conditions.

Linden honey

Light yellow, easy to crystallize, has a characteristic smell of linden flowers.

Acacia honey

Transparent, lighter, more liquid, with a light aroma of acacia. It crystallizes slowly.

Buckwheat honey

Bright brown, with a characteristic odor and a slight bitterness.

Field and meadow honey

Light amber or brown in color, with a very pleasant smell and taste. It has almost all medicinal properties.

Fruit honey

Collected from berry and fruit crops. Light amber, with a delicate smell and taste. It has dietary qualities.

Sunflower honey

Golden yellow, pleasant to taste, crystallizes quickly. Antiallergenic, but inferior in medicinal properties to the main types of honey.

Kinds of fakes honey

• Natural honey with additives;
• Honey from non-nectar products;
• Artificial "honey".

Natural honey with additives

Often resellers dilute natural honey with additives. It could be sugar syrup with tea leaves, starch, chalk, sand  and other. Additives can stand out unnaturally light or too dark or resemble caramel in consistency. Honey becomes cloudy or has a precipitate.

Honey from non-nectar products

Another type of low-quality product is honey obtained not from nectar. Bees are fed sugar syrup to get processed sugar. To understand how to distinguish honey from a fake, you need to smell it (the smell is like sweet water) and try it (there will be crystals of sugar or powder in your mouth).

Artificial "honey"

Fully artificial honey is also prepared. Syrup made from sugar and acid is boiled, cleaned with soda, starch and various flavorings are added. All this has a cloying taste, it can be stratified or have lumps.

Also, a suspiciously low price indicates a sure sign of fake. Honey is a costly product, and therefore expensive. Having met honey at a seductive price in the market, it is best not to rush to purchase it, but first think: why the beekeeper, having spent so much effort to get honey, sells it so cheaply? The likelihood that this is a low-quality product, consisting of additives to natural honey or, even worse, completely artificial, is very high.

How to distinguish honey from fakes in the market

Every year the number of unscrupulous manufacturers and resellers is only growing. And it becomes more difficult to distinguish a natural product from an artificial one. Often visually this is even simply impossible. Therefore, other ways have been devised to distinguish honey from fake.

For the average buyer, there are several simple ways to distinguish honey from a fake.

• Real honey, when you try it, it will dissolve in your mouth evenly and without residue, there will be no crystals or powdered sugar on your tongue. Also, after real honey, a little sore throat.
• You can calculate the fake using a glass of water and iodine. Add a little honey to the glass, then water and stir it all. Additives in this case will settle at the bottom. If, when a drop of iodine is added to the solution, the color of the solution turns blue, then starch is present in the honey.
• You can apply the method with a spoon, winding honey on it quickly. Natural honey will become like caramel, spinning without dripping from a spoon. And if it drains, and even bubbles or changes color, then obviously there are additives.
• If you let honey drain from a spoon, natural honey will drain in a continuous stream and go downhill, an intermittent stream and the absence of a hill indicate a fake.
• If you put a little honey on paper and leave it for about five minutes, the appearance of a wet spot on the back will give out a fake (diluted honey).
• If the surface of honey is sprinkled with starch, the resulting white film will show that the honey is real. If starch is absorbed, it is a fake.
• Crystallized honey is sometimes tried to set fire to. Regular melting will show that the quality is good, and hissing and crackling will indicate the presence of additional components.
• Having oiled a small piece of paper with honey, they set it on fire. A good product will not burn, will not melt and will not become brown.
• Add vinegar to the spoon with honey, if it foams, this means that chalk is present in the “honey”.
• A good way to distinguish natural honey from a fake is to use a regular piece of bread. Dip it in honey for 10-15 minutes. If after this time the bread remains not softened, then everything is in order. If the bread is soft, sugar water is added to the honey.
• Some scammers manage to add gelatin to increase viscosity. To check honey for the presence of gelatin to 5 ml. an aqueous solution of honey add 5-10 drops of a 5% solution of tannin. The formation of white flakes will indicate the presence of gelatin in honey.

What kind of honey does not exist?

Some varieties of honey should already be wary of their name. Consider several non-existing varieties of "honey".

It is impossible to get honey from rose hips, chamomile, corn, lupine, hazel or poppy. The flowers of these plants do not produce nectar.

Royal jelly honey does not exist, there is a mixture of royal jelly with honey, but it is very difficult to make it at home, and it is almost impossible to sell it.

May honey in the northern regions of Russia - a real beekeeper will not collect in the month of May, since bees only feed at this time.

From, strawberries, blackberries - plants contain nectar in very small quantities, so it is very difficult to make it for sale. Such honey on the market indicates that the bees were fed with appropriate juice, which means that the product is of poor quality and it is better not to buy such honey.

You can get honey from pumpkin, but due to the presence of pesticides in it, it can be dangerous.

Real honey has a floral aroma, a pleasant taste that can slightly bitter and tickle in the throat. Armed with ways to distinguish honey from a fake in appearance and all of the above parameters, you will not fall for a fake, and you will use only a high-quality natural product.

When choosing honey for yourself, prefer more dense varieties. If the product has a transparent consistency, it may well be that it was warmed up by the seller.