All About Honey
Honey is the natural sweet substance produced by honey bees from the nectar of plants which bees collect and transform by substance of their own, deposit, dehydrate and store in the honeycomb. The B Farm raises bees that produce natural raw honey, which we sell through Crystal’s Honey.
Floral honey is the result of the co-evolution of honeybees and flowering plants. Over the course of the millennia, trees and flowering plants have modified their leaves to become the petals of flowers and developed nectarines in an effort to attract honeybees to physically accomplish the pollen transfer necessary for their reproduction. For many species of plants, pollen attractiveness alone is sufficient cause to lure the honeybee visit. But even in these cases, leaf modification in color, number and orientation evolved in response to the honeybees vision and sense of smell.
Plants that offer nectar as well as pollen have an evolutionary advantage in the competition among flowers to achieve pollination from a relatively limited number of insects. Some examples include economically important crop plants like almonds, apples, blueberries and cranberries.
Nectar then contains sugar which becomes the attractant for the honeybee. The excessive water content of the nectar leaves it unstable in nature. Natural raw honey results when honeybees reduce the moisture of nectar to approximately 18%, which is a point at which honey can last indefinitely.
