Subject: Heat Kills Vitamins & Enz

From: [email-masked] (Andy Nachbaur)
Date: Fri, 19 May 1995 14:50:00 GMT

R<>From: [email-masked] (Rita Pirone Noak)

 <>An article in "Eating Well" June 1995 titled "The beekeeper's palette"
 <>there is this fella in France, Grabriel Perronneau, who says that
 <>"...Many American beekeepers heat their honey after extraction to delay
 <>the natural crystallization process, which, depending on the honey,
 <>starts a few weeks to a few years after bottling.  Perronneau scorns
 <>the process because he says it destroys the vitamins and enzymes."

R<>Is this true?  What vitamins, what enzymes?

It's true that much honey is pasteurized, (heated, filtered, and cooled)
to give it shelf life in the retail market. As for what is removed or
lost from the so called natural honey, much of it is only natural
because of the way it is handled by some beekeepers. Most of the so
called vitamins and enzymes are added in the beekeeping extracting
process when pollen and anything that is not honey is mixed with the
honey when the combs are uncapped and extracted.

R<>Also the article pointed out that average American and Frenchman eat only
 <>one pound of honey, while the average German eats FIVE pounds of honey!

The German's use to think that honey was essential to human nutrition
and most of the honey they consumed that was not purchased through the
mail was picked up at the drug store. I am sure it may be different
today with modern super markets and mass marketing and I am also sure
the old five pound average consumption may be much less.

  Here in the US we consume more corn sugars in soda pop and manufactured
foods then table sugars. The old sugar mills are being closed and new
corn product refractories are replacing them. Without US government
controls on the amount of raw sugar imported from other countries we
would no longer have cane or beet sugar growers, and this may change
at any time.

  If you think one pound of honey that Americans consume in a year is
small in comparison to the five pounds consumed in Germany, you should
know that in the USA we consume more then one pound of chemical
substitutes for sugar per person per year.

                           ttul Andy-

(c)Permission to reproduce, granted.

---

From: [email-masked] (Peter Amschel)
Date: 20 May 1995 04:47:54 GMT

In <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Rita
Pirone Noak) writes: 
>
>An article in "Eating Well" June 1995 titled "The beekeeper's palette"
>there is this fella in France, Grabriel Perronneau, who says that 
>"...Many American beekeepers heat their honey after extraction to
delay 
>the natural crystallization process, which, depending on the honey, 
>starts a few weeks to a few years after bottling.  Perronneau scorns 
>the process because he says it destroys the vitamins and enzymes."
>
>Is this true?  What vitamins, what enzymes?
>
>
>Also the article pointed out that average American and Frenchman eat
only
>one pound of honey, while the average German eats FIVE pounds of
honey!

Thanks for the info about French and German honey consumption. I agree,
in my own semi-unexperienced 1.5 beekeeping experience, that "HONIG"
should not be heated at all. Here in Hemet during the honey flow they
weather is hot and the honey is plenty liquified and flows nicely
through my nylong paintbag filter. One secretary depends on my honey
because she says that local bees foraging for local nectars and pollen
produce HONIG which has an anti-allergenic effect. She takes a big
dollop of my HONIG every day during the pollen season. The big honey
producers combine HONIG from beekeepers from many different areas.

---

From: [email-masked] (Grey Lynn Housing Trust)
Date: 22 May 1995 12:11:11 GMT

>producers combine HONIG from beekeepers from many different areas.
Commercial apiarists here in New Zealand heat honey too.In some cases water is added to take it up to the maximum permissable water content
There are two schools of thought about the harm it does to the honey. You could obtain an unbiased comment from the International Bee Research Assn. U.K.

---

From: [email-masked] (Aaron Morris)
Date: Mon, 22 May 95 07:47:20 EDT

In article <[email-masked]>

>honey when the combs are uncapped and extracted.
 
Adding a little, most commercial honey packers heat honey to make it
less viscous and flow better through pipes and tubes.  It is filtered
to remove 'foreign' particles (pollen, dirt, bee parts) and is then
blended with various brands of honey (honey from different floral
sources) to give a consistent product.  There ARE enzymes in honey that
are destroyed if the honey is heated above 113 degrees F, and there are
viatmins and proteins in pollen that is removed in the filtering process.
So the answer to the original question is Yes, enzymes and vitamins
which are in "natural" honey are destroyed and removed from commercial
honey.  The specific enzymes and vitamins are not carried around in
this poster's brain, but a good source for that information would be
_The_Hive_and_the_Honeybee_ from Dadant press ('92 edition, don't know
what chapter or page).
 
Aaron Morris

---

From: [email-masked] (Rick Hough)
Date: Tue, 23 May 1995 10:09:38 -0500

In article <[email-masked]>, [email-masked]
(Rita Pirone Noak) wrote:

>"...Many American beekeepers heat their honey after extraction to delay 

Rita - Yes, there are many vitamins and enzymes in honey, mostly
only in trace amounts, however. I don't have the detailed info
on hand. Part of the problem is that they vary depending upon
the nectar source that produced the honey.

Yes, *EXCESSIVE* heat will destroy them, but it is not a
black/white situation - it is a progressive sort of thing,
the longer the exposure, and the higher the heat, the more
things get clobbered. So, you can actually "spike" honey to
a surprisingly high heat, as long as you cool it off very
quickly (this "flash" process requires fancy equipment and
is generally beyond the capability of smaller operations).
You can safely heat honey some without causing any noticable
degredation (the purists will say that *any* heat damages the
honey.... I agree, but the amount of damage may be so subtle
that you can only detect it with advanced scientific
instruments... for my purposes, I call that level of
degredation "none")

There are two primary reasons for heating the honey (that
I'm aware of) - Warm honey is less viscous, so it is easier
to filter and bottle. The air bubbles will also settle out
more quickly. You don't really need very much heat to do this.
The other reason, as you mentioned, is to delay crystalization.
This requires more heat, and I generally don't do it, except
when I am making "creamed honey" (I heat the liquid honey prior
to introducing my seed - this is to eliminate any crystals
in the liquid honey, so that only the crystals from the seed
are present to start the creaming process).

Hope this is helpful info for you.....

Sincerely,
Rick Hough
[email-masked]
a hobby beekeeper from NE Massachusetts (19 hives at the moment)

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