Honey is the most important food for human health. Honey that is directly involved in the bloodstream without digestion is an important source of energy for the human body. Therefore, maintaining the quality of honey should be the main responsibility of both producers and intermediaries. Today, there are domestic and foreign standards developed in this direction. It is a necessity for all enterprises to comply with both these standards and the legal regulations. Whether the honey produced and sold has these properties is demonstrated by tests and analyzes in food laboratories.

These tests and analyzes carried out in food laboratories are important in terms of determining whether or not manufacturers are following the standards and legal regulations on the one hand and determining the compliance with the criteria described on the label of the honey after the production.

What is Honey?

Turkish Food Codex Regulation published in 2011 by the Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Livestock, minimum technical and hygiene criteria for food and food contact materials, chemical pharmaceutical residues, food additives and flavors, packaging, labeling, sampling, The methods of analysis regulate the principles for transport and storage.

Based on this regulation, the Turkish Food Codex Honey Communiqué (Communiqué 2012 / 2012) was published in 58. The purpose of this Communiqué is to explain the characteristics that honey should have in the stages of production, preparation, processing, storage, transportation and presentation of the products under suitable conditions and hygienic conditions.

In these legal regulations, honey is defined as: honey is a natural product formed by the honeybee by collecting secretions from plant nectars and live parts of plants, combining them with the substances within the structure of the bee, changing the structure, decreasing the water content and storing it in a honeycomb. In a simpler way, the bees take nectar from the fruit buds and flowers and swallow them. Then they mix the nectar with an enzyme in the stomach and cause chemical changes. Then they collect it in the combs. These honeycombs are also produced by bees. However, honey producers use honeycombs to speed up the process.

The main characteristics of honey are:

• Color may vary from water white to dark brown
• Fluid, but viscous, resistant to fluidity
• Partially or completely crystallized
• Taste and aroma vary according to the source and plant species

A quality honey is always crystallized regularly. This does not change the feeder property of honey. If the amount of water or sugar in the composition of honey is loose crystallization.

Highlights in Honey Testing and Analysis

The main factors affecting the composition of honey are:

• Which season the honey is obtained
• Which plants collect nectar
• Climatic conditions of honey

Honey tests and analyzes are also conducted in this direction. The components of honey are:

• Water: Honey contains less water than 20.
• Carbohydrates: There is sugar between the 70-80 and fructose and glucose in honey.
• Mineral substances: The most important minerals in honey are calcium, potassium and phosphorus.
• Aminoacids: 100-40-100 is the amino acid in the gram.
• Other acids: Balda 10 has organic acids such as formic acid, malic acid, lactic acid and citric acid. They create a unique fragrance.
• Enzymes: The most common enzyme in honey is invertase. This is the enzyme that converts nectar to honey.
• Vitamins: Balda contains vitamins B, C, E and K.

In general, two kinds of honeys according to the source:

• Flower or nectar honey, directly from the plant flowers are produced from nectar.
• Secretory honey is the calf obtained from the secretions of plants or from the secretions of insects living on the plants.

The requirements of honey tests are:

• Highest humidity (20 for both honey types)
• Maximum amount of sucrose (100-5 grams in 15 grams in flower honey, 5-10 grams in secretion honey)
• The lowest amount of fructose and glucose (100 gram in 60 grams in flower honey, 45 gram in secretion honey)
• Maximum amount of water insoluble matter (100 grams in 0.1 grams in both honey types)
• Maximum free acidity (50 meq per kilogram of honey)
• The lowest number of diastases (8 in both honey types)
• Maximum amount of HMF (hydroxymethyl furfurol) (40 mg per kilogram of honey)
• Minimum amount of proline (180 mg per kilogram of honey)
• Maximum amount of naphthalene (10 ppb per kilogram)

Honey analyzes are conducted under three main headings:

• Determination of moisture content. The determination of moisture content in honey is based on the principle of finding the moisture ratio by utilizing the refractive index of light. This ratio is measured by refractometer.

• Determination of the amount of HMF (hydroxymethyl furfurol). When the honey is heated at high temperatures or stored in poor conditions for a long time, the nutrient values ​​in it decrease and the amount of HMF (hydroxymethyl furfurol) increases. This is undesirable. The determination of the amount of HMF in honey is done for this purpose.
• Determination of the amount of dextrin. The purpose of this analysis is to qualitatively determine whether honey is fraudulent in any way. If the test result shows a yellow-brown color in the tube, this means no cheating.

In our organization, detailed honey tests and analyzes are carried out by expert employees, impartially and independently.