# when honey is not honey



## waynesgarden (Jan 3, 2009)

I call it bee food that should not have been extracted.

It is not honey.

Wayne


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

I call it syrup...


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## drlonzo (Apr 15, 2014)

Simply called syrup... The definition for honey is as follows: a sweet, sticky, yellowish-brown fluid made by bees and other insects from nectar collected from flowers.

Therefore if we fed them sugar syrup, it cannot be honey. Must come from flowers....


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## Sully (Mar 31, 2013)

How can you tell if it's honey or syrup? 
Is there a visual difference? 
Will the bees cap syrup?


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## drlonzo (Apr 15, 2014)

Bees do indeed cap syrup. Visual diff is normally very white cappings as there isn't any color in the syrup, nectar has color which will cause the cappings to have a diff color. 

Putting food color into the sugar syrup will tell you what's what, but if you feed at all while there is honey supers on, it will end up in them.


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## beedeetee (Nov 27, 2004)

White cappings are not necessarily an indication of capped syrup. When we produce cut comb, we try to find the bees that leave a small air space between the cappings and honey. Those bees make bright white comb honey. The bees that put cappings that touch the honey have darker (colored) and wet looking comb honey. The white always sells best.


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## ruthiesbees (Aug 27, 2013)

It can be very difficult to tell the difference between capped syrup and capped honey, especially in brood comb. I've gotten some very light honey that did have a slightly darker color then the syrup, but in the fresh comb, you couldn't tell the difference. In fact, I sent some foundationless comb with capped syrup to a major horticulture show with a local bee club in February, and most of the beekeepers didn't realize it was the "other stuff". Syrup tastes super sweet and doesn't have the same robust flavors that honey does. I accidentally broke a couple of my capped syrup combs in early spring and went ahead and strained the stuff out to mix with pollen to feed back to the bees. It still has all the bee enzymes in it, so don't throw it out. Just don't sell it as honey.


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## Sully (Mar 31, 2013)

Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions. Luckily I have not fed since spring so I don't need to worry about it at this time. I do have a few more questions.
What is the problem with the syrup? What I mean by this is:
Does it taste bad? 
Does it not store for a long period of time?
Is it unhealthy for human consumption?

Thanks


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>Does it taste bad? 
It tastes like sugar. The only taste is has is sweet...

>Does it not store for a long period of time?
It will keep about the same as honey if it's dry enough.

>Is it unhealthy for human consumption?
It won't hurt you anymore than sugar syrup will. It won't help you any more than sugar syrup will. I'm sure thousands of pounds of it are sold every year as honey...


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## COAL REAPER (Jun 24, 2014)

i guess let me emphasize that i wont feed anything but pure honey to my bees unless it is a late swarm or one collected right before a dearth. so i dont have much interest in this other than playing devils advocate i suppose.
if one is open feeding during a flow AND the bees are utilizing that feed, is it still just 'syrup' even though it is mixed?...at some unknown concentration. the syrup is processed just the same as nectar is. its got the beegut enzymes and all, right? not really a way for the beekeep or consumer to have much knowledge of this other then speculating by taste, right? well i guess there is the pure honey tests with lighting tissue on fire and pouring into water.
the original question has been answered: syrup.
so sugar syrup is made with sugar, corn syrup with corn and/fructrose stuff, syrup is one of those processed by the bees into the combs. what then is it called when pure honey is cut with one of the afforementioned syrups in order to increase product? unethical yes im sure we can all agree, but what if?


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## ruthiesbees (Aug 27, 2013)

COAL REAPER said:


> what then is it called when pure honey is cut with one of the afforementioned syrups in order to increase product?


The Dollar Store is labeling what is on their shelf "honey syrup". I'm sure it's honey cut with corn sweetener, but it amounts to the same thing if someone is open feeding with supers on. 

My mother bought some honey from a friend of hers and had me taste it. I said "Mom, it's very sweet and kinda runny. I'd like to meet the beekeeper". Sure enough, he had a boardman feeder right there at the hive with the honey supers on. After we left his place, I let her know that she should only be paying him half of what she did because it wasn't 100% honey.


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## BeeTech (Mar 19, 2012)

How about "feed" or "stored feed" to keep it generalized


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## mrobinson (Jan 20, 2012)

Unfortunately, a lot of beekeepers want and expect what Nature could never produce ... and they _mis_interpret "what Nature valiantly does in response to their meddling" as ... "a miracle." (They willingly, but gullibly "believe it" simply because it is What They Want To Hear.)

In reality, a honeybee collects _minuscule_ amounts of nectar and/or pollen from each of the _hundreds of thousands_ of individual flowers that it methodically visits. When these resources are available in abundance, the colony efficiently lays-up stores ... which we call "honey" ... so that it can live through the inevitable dearth (and, the dead of winter) by eating them down again.

But now, "earnest (and greedy?) beekeepers" present them with a thing that they know nothing of: _gallons_ of _simple (refined!) sucrose._ As it turns out, their response is relatively simple: they store it. The jubilant beekeepers rejoice at their ninety-five pound supers full of "honey," and quickly snatch them away and sell them to the public.

... unless they are fighting an ever-increasing legion of predators and viruses and who-knows what-else that somehow seem to be decimating their strangely-weakened colonies. _"That's okay! There's a treatment for that!!"_ Yes, an American Express Card seems to vanquish all foes.

... except ... that _wild_ honeybee colonies somehow seem to be thriving in the most gosh-darned of places: trees, eaves, walls, even sometimes out in the open. They seem to be thriving when our _(to abuse a metaphor)_ "steroid-crazed alternate versions of 'reality'" seem to be showing-up on the wrong side of Natural Selection.


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

COAL REAPER said:


> its got the beegut enzymes and all, right?
> 
> what then is it called when pure honey is cut with one of the afforementioned syrups in order to increase product? unethical yes im sure we can all agree, but what if?


"beegut enzymes"? If you mean the enzymes which get added to nectar when bees bring nectar back to the hive, those enzymes come from the mandibular glands, which are in the mouth parts, not from the "beegut". So, no, wrong.

If Honey is adulterated w/ anything in the way you seemed to be asking about, "cut with one of the aforementioned syrups", that is called adulterated honey and should not be labeled as Honey. That is not only wrong and unethical, being a lie, it is illegal. People who have done it have been prosecuted for doing so. You can do a websearch and find these cases.

My apologies to Coal Reaper. I was wrong. Apparently he was correct. Nectar in the honey stomach gets partly inverted while in the honey stomach of the bee that gathered it and then again/some more in the honey stomach of the house bee that receives it from her.

Thank you ruthiesbees for spurring me on to further investigation and better understanding.


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

ruthiesbees said:


> The Dollar Store is labeling what is on their shelf "honey syrup". I'm sure it's honey cut with corn sweetener,


If you read the Ingredients listed on that stuff you will probably find that it is rice syrup and honey and probably in that order. What is even worse is that it is sold in a squeeze bear which is easily identified by consumers as Honey. People associate the Squeeze Bear w/ Honey. Selling Rice Syrup w/ Honey in it in a squeeze bear was done on purpose. Count on it.


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

mrobinson said:


> Unfortunately, a lot of beekeepers want and expect what Nature could never produce ... and they _mis_interpret "what Nature valiantly does in response to their meddling" as ... "a miracle." (They willingly, but gullibly "believe it" simply because it is What They Want To Hear.)
> 
> In reality, a honeybee collects _minuscule_ amounts of nectar and/or pollen from each of the _hundreds of thousands_ of individual flowers that it methodically visits. When these resources are available in abundance, the colony efficiently lays-up stores ... which we call "honey" ... so that it can live through the inevitable dearth (and, the dead of winter) by eating them down again.
> 
> ...


The operative word being "seem".


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## ruthiesbees (Aug 27, 2013)

sqkcrk said:


> "beegut enzymes"? If you mean the enzymes which get added to nectar when bees bring nectar back to the hive, those enzymes come from the mandibular glands, which are in the mouth parts, not from the "beegut". So, no, wrong.


I'm pretty sure that the worker bees add enzymes while the nectar is stored in their honey stomach and the "stuff" from the glands on the heads of the house bees are used to make royal jelly.


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

Thanks Ruthie. You and Coal Reaper are correct. See my edited Post.


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## Rader Sidetrack (Nov 30, 2011)

The issue of how nectar gets processed inside a bee is somewhat complicated.  I suggest reading the entire article on Honey Bee Nutrition from the University of Georgia linked here: 

http://www.beeccdcap.uga.edu/documents/caparticle10.html

A few highlights ...


> Newly emerged bees have undeveloped hypopharyngeal and mandibular glands. Hypopharyngeal glands are paired glands inside worker’s head, consisting of a long central duct with many “grapes” (acini) attached. The glands will only develop after consuming a lot of pollen for the first 7-10 days. The glands first secrete the protein-rich component of royal jelly in young bees, but then secrete invertase, which is used to convert sucrose to simple sugars (fructose and glucose), in foragers. Mandibular glands are simple, sac-like structures attached to the base of each mandible. The glands secrete lipid-rich components of the royal jelly in young bees, but produce an alarm pheromone (2-heptanone) in foragers.
> 
> http://www.beeccdcap.uga.edu/documents/caparticle10.html


A key issue as noted in that quote is that the 'output' of the Hypopharyngeal glands change with the bee's age.


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## Daniel Y (Sep 12, 2011)

drlonzo said:


> Simply called syrup... The definition for honey is as follows: a sweet, sticky, yellowish-brown fluid made by bees and other insects from nectar collected from flowers.
> 
> Therefore if we fed them sugar syrup, it cannot be honey. Must come from flowers....


Says Who? 
Merriam Webster dictionary provides at least two.

a : a sweet viscid material elaborated out of the nectar of flowers in the honey sac of various bees
b : a sweet fluid resembling honey that is collected or elaborated by various insects 

Note b has nothing to do with bees or necessarily nectar or flowers.

another source shows

a sweet, viscid fluid produced by bees from the nectar collected from flowers, and stored in nests or hives as food. 

Now I see one problem with these. Bees do not collect fluids from just flowers. They collect them from other parts of plants and even collect it from other insects. At best I see this as not much more than a elementary level definition.

As far as telling the difference between honey made from sugar water corn syrup or other none foraged plant based sources. I am not sure a lot of people could tell simply by taste or looks.

I have seen comments that bees will use 1:1 sugar water as feed while they will store 2:1 I could not say one way or the other. I do know I can feed 1:1 and not find stores in a hive. Right now bees will not take much sugar water and seem to have a flow going for the moment. So I am not certain bees will make honey out of sugar water at all.

I would say start with establishing that bees do in fact make honey out of anything other than those plant based fluids they collect via foraging. Most commonly recognized by simply considering them nectar.

Otherwise I am not sure you could determine a difference short of a laboratory.

So assume that bees do in fact convert sugar water to honey. they also convert nectar and other fluids to honey. so is it important just what fluid it was they started with? Is it the fluid that makes it honey? Or the bee?


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## cryptobrian (Jan 22, 2012)

Daniel Y said:


> Says Who?


Lots of folks. Take a look at any number of the various legal definitions being floated around the country. In my neck of the woods, for example:

69.28.310
"Honey" defined.
The term "honey" as used herein is the nectar of floral exudations of plants, gathered and stored in the comb by honey bees (apis mellifica). It is laevo-rotatory, contains not more than twenty-five percent of water, not more than twenty-five one-hundredths of one percent of ash, not more than eight percent of sucrose, its specific gravity is 1.412, its weight not less than eleven pounds twelve ounces per standard gallon of 231 cubic inches at sixty-eight degrees Fahrenheit.



Daniel Y said:


> So assume that bees do in fact convert sugar water to honey. they also convert nectar and other fluids to honey. so is it important just what fluid it was they started with? Is it the fluid that makes it honey? Or the bee?


This is the rub. Not all definitions are created equal. They have purpose. The legal definitions are not biological definitions. The legal definitions are crafted to describe and protect a product. The biological definitions are crafted to describe the animal process and excretions. They aren't aligned.

Calling the stuff that comes out of the cell "syrup" when the bees were fed sugar is confusing to me. Syrup is what was fed to them too. It ignores the fact the biological conversion that took place. What comes out is different than what went in, so why are both "syrup". From a biological definition, I think it's honey (unless there is some other scientific name for the stuff). But it would be an inferior product and so from a product definition, we don't want to call it honey. We are lacking the right words.


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## Rader Sidetrack (Nov 30, 2011)

I like $10 words.  I call it _faux honey_.


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## Ryan Williamson (Feb 28, 2012)

I agree that it is more than syrup but naturally not pure honey. Personally I have always used the term "Sugar Honey" 

Oh wait is that what I am sposed to call my Wife?


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## Wendellww (Sep 20, 2014)

Rader Sidetrack said:


> I like $10 words.  I call it _faux honey_.


I call it "Funny Hunny", but I like Faux Honey and may borrow that term (not to ever bee returned)!


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## COAL REAPER (Jun 24, 2014)

sqkcrk said:


> "beegut enzymes"? If you mean the enzymes which get added to nectar when bees bring nectar back to the hive, those enzymes come from the mandibular glands, which are in the mouth parts, not from the "beegut". So, no, wrong.
> 
> If Honey is adulterated w/ anything in the way you seemed to be asking about, "cut with one of the aforementioned syrups", that is called adulterated honey and should not be labeled as Honey. That is not only wrong and unethical, being a lie, it is illegal. People who have done it have been prosecuted for doing so. You can do a websearch and find these cases.
> 
> ...


i was right about something! even the blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while. all seriousness aside, no need to apologize. but really youre going to argue whether the enzymes come from glands in the mouth vs. guts?
so as far as honey goes, is it the process by which it arrives in the cells or the source of the materials that go into it? looks like we might agree that it is both. or maybe not...
obviously there is huge ethical and legal issues associated with mixing honey with syrup and marketing it as pure honey. does the same legality hold true if one were to open feed near thier apiary? what if an apiary down the roadthat is not taking honey this year is open feeding while you have honey supers on? you can bet your bees are stopping in there at some point if it is within flying distance. yet neither party is intentially doing anything wrong. many feed syrup in the spring just prior to adding honey supers. has it not been proven that the bees are capable of moving syrup feed from brood chambers up into supers? 
and again, this is just one guy thinking.


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

It's a matter of whether there is anything detectable in the honey that is not supposed to be there, something that is unacceptable, an unacceptable level.

Let's say you had syrup feeders on your hives all throughout the nectar gathering season and after you extracted your crop you had your honey sampled and lab tested to see whether your honey was tainted by the presence of syrup. If there was a finding of "No Detectable Adulteration or Contamination", would you sell your "honey" as Honey? Or dump it?


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## COAL REAPER (Jun 24, 2014)

good question. while I wouldnt have syrup feeders on MY hive for any extended period of time (let alone all nectar gathering season), if i had gone to the lengths to get my honey tested, i have to assume that my intent would have been to sell the honey in the first place. otherwise i would just store it for feed to use at a later date, likely to get new nucs up and running easier. if in fact the finding was as you described, yeah it would get sold, but not until all my pure honey was sold AND i dont see a need for it as feed between now and the next nectar flow. dont get me wrong, i certainly have great reservations about this. but again if i was putting forth the effort to get it tested then my intention would have to be that i would sell it if it checked out clear.
do i support feeding during a nectar flow? no. they only time i will feed is in the end of winter if a strong coloney has run out of stores.
do i support feeding other than pure honey? no. i save a surplus of honey just in case.
my only exception may be with a light sugar syrup in order to get nucs to draw out new comb. i have to date not done this yet, but i figure by the time those nucs are used in a production colony that i will be harvesting honey from, there should be very little if any sugar syrup remnants in that comb.


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

And if you had tons of honey like that?

Some people think that if any kind of syrup is ever fed that since bees move stores around some of that syrup/honey will get extracted and stored in buckets or barrels and then sold to the public as Honey.


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## Daniel Y (Sep 12, 2011)

There is a net reduction in stores during the spring build up. to me this is proof enough that they not only are not storing what they forage. there maximum foraging ability is not adequate. they must deplete additional stores to keep up. If feeding is limited to this reduction of stores period there is no concern that sugar water is being stored. They may move honey down and mix it with sugar water in the process. but that honey will be fed to brood not stored as honey again. Feeding during storing later in the season would result in syrup contaminated honey.

I see many speak of honey stores and use as if the bees only have that much honey to work with. I think they go through that honey and and a multiple of it over and over. I do not think the bees start with 100 lbs of honey and are limited to producing only as much brood as can be reared on that. I think they have 100lbs of honey and that supplements the several hundred other lbs of nectar and forage they will bring in.

I have seen my bees bring in 90 lbs of nectar in a single week. but I do not see that build up during build up. so where is approx 100 lbs of nectar going in all those weeks? Into brood. along with 100lbs of honey in the hive. I suspect a hive goes through somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 lbs of goods in just the few weeks of spring build up. Our feeding does little more than wake them up and get them started.


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## COAL REAPER (Jun 24, 2014)

sqkcrk said:


> And if you had tons of honey like that?
> 
> Some people think that if any kind of syrup is ever fed that since bees move stores around some of that syrup/honey will get extracted and stored in buckets or barrels and then sold to the public as Honey.


i think it highly unlikly that one would intentionally come to have tons of honey like that in their possesion. other than being a shady beekeeper (bet they are out there doing this every day), how could this possibly be feasible? and again, if you have the documention from the lab stating "No Detectable Adulteration or Contamination", nobody is to stop you from labeling that honey any way you want.

i remember reading somewhere that the concept of bees moving stores had been proven with food dye. cant remember the source to cite it tho.


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

I had a teacher who did that w/syrup which the bees made into comb. It came out red.


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## gjt (Jul 24, 2014)

Today, I had a run in with "honey" syrup at my morning tea place.








I took a pack to lament what would prompt someone to replace the regular honey...


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## waynesgarden (Jan 3, 2009)

Daniel Y said:


> Says Who?
> Merriam Webster dictionary provides at least two.
> 
> a : a sweet viscid material elaborated out of the nectar of flowers in the honey sac of various bees
> ...


Note that definition b is problematic to me in that it defines a substance "resembling" the substance it is defining. Can a definition reference itself? 

A good quality motor oil could be said to "resemble" honey. Should we include motor oil in our definition? No more than we are willing to include "Yellow jacket" in our definition of "honey bee" although there is clearly a resemblance.

If we are casual about our definitions, so will the syrup producers dumping their barrels in the US.

Wayne


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## Wendellww (Sep 20, 2014)

Funny Honey or Pseudo Honey


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## Daniel Y (Sep 12, 2011)

waynesgarden said:


> Note that definition b is problematic to me in that it defines a substance "resembling" the substance it is defining. Can a definition reference itself?
> 
> Wayne


Evidently it can. that is a definition of honey and it does reference honey. I agree that it may not be a good or even a suitable definition.

I am not concerned that the definition references itself. Definitions do that all the time. What I am interested in is the point it makes that Honey is not necessarily made only by bees. So are those other honey's honey?


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

Something that resembles honey is by definition not honey. I may resemble wildbranch, having been mistaken for him or he for me, but I am not him. Same thing w/ everything else. Only Honey is Honey. Anything that resembles Honey is not.


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## Daniel Y (Sep 12, 2011)

Mark, The definition above is in fact a definition of honey. so that you think something described as honey like cannot be a honey is your opinion. Something someone is defining as honey is in fact described as honey like. I did not write that definition I simply found it. seems a strange way to phrase ti myself. But it does not change the fact that someone chose to write a definition of honey by describing something honey like.

This conversation has pretty much been focused on what liquid bees make honey out of.

This issue brings in a new issue. is honey only a product of Honey Bees that are using only a certain liquid to convert? Or is honey something that is a liquid produced by any insect from the correct fluids? The issue is not about someone using "honey like". it is about someone making a claim that honey bees are not the only insect that can make honey. And they do not make it from nectar. in many cases they make it from other plant fluids. So there goes the nectar argument. now sugar is a product that comes from plants also. so why all of a sudden is this liquid fine. and that liquid is fine but this plant liquid product is not?

Let me take this a bit further and see if I can't form a more reasonable argument.

Aphids produce what is called honey dew. product produced form the fluids of plants. Bees collect this honeydew. this dew is not nectar. Bees will collect it and use it in making honey. so is any honey that has been adulterated by honey dew no longer honey? Or are there other insects that in fact make honey?

Now if in fact honey dew causes honey to no longer be honey. then I can in fact claim that no beekeeper can insure they have pure honey. Because bees make honey out of other things than just nectar.

This presents a big problem when we then attempt to define honey as something produced from nectar specifically.

If we allow other substances to be considered this causes problems with the sugar issue.

This is just a short list of other substances I have seen mentioned that bees will collect and convert to honey. Soda, other sugary drinks, fluids from damaged over ripened fruit, hard candy. fluids from other insets. and many many others. Now if a definition excludes anything other than nectar. You for the most part insure that pure honey cannot be produced and certainly cannot be guaranteed.

And again if honey produced from all those other substances is not considered adulterated. then what is the issue with sugar? Is the issue one of volume? or that it was provided by intentional actions? 

Is there a way to define the actual process and distinct alteration that takes place that causes nectar to become honey. while all other substances become something else?


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

Daniel, do you think that something that is like honey is honey? Would you eat something that is like honey, but is not actually honey?


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

.....and if you want to have some actual input into this subject folks it's not too late.
https://www.federalregister.gov/art...m_medium=email&utm_source=federalregister.gov
I sold a large quantity of honeydew to a large, reputable packer recently. It only contained a few trace amounts of weed pollen but had all the sensory qualities of any dark honey. That's right, no GMO pollen and it could be sold at a premium in Europe, but the hoops to jump through to get it there were insurmountable. The packer claimed, after doing some research, that it was allowable to be resold as honey and were happy to get it at dark honey price. I made lots of inquiries hoping that someone could market it domestically at a premium for what it is but no such luck.


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

Are you going to comment, Jim?


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## Daniel Y (Sep 12, 2011)

sqkcrk said:


> Daniel, do you think that something that is like honey is honey? Would you eat something that is like honey, but is not actually honey?


No I do not think that something like honey is honey. but I do think that honey was described as honey like. There is a difference.

Would I eat it. yes I get it from KFC all the time. It is called honey sauce. Is it honey? No but it still tastes good.

Is honey not honey because someone chose to phrase it strangely? or is honey like substance honey because someone chose to phrase it well? I don't think the distinction should lie in how it was phrased.

The real question is. Is honey only honey if it was produced from nectar? And anything else is honey like at best? So do other insects produce honey? I have seen others readily admit they do such as a bumble bee. This sort of settles the issue that honey is made by the Honey Bee. But for describing the marketed product I say that honey needs to be limited to being produced only by the Honey Bee.

So although not technically correct for the purpose of defining Raw Honey as marketed and accepted by beekeepers I will still argue for exclusion of any other insect as a producer of Raw Honey, Pure honey or whatever other terminology is agreed upon.

I don't see this as an attempt to define Honey in it's entirety. I see it as an attempt to define a product that would then be labeled as Raw, Pure. Unadulterated or whatever.

Look at the title of this thread. when is "Honey" not "Honey" Now that woudl be a strange thing to say if you do not take it in the context of the bigger issue. Is not Honey like Honey not saying the exact same thing?


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