THE TASTE OF HONEY
THE STORIES AND RECIPES BEHIND OUR GREAT FOODIE TRADITIONS
The delicious history of beekeeping is long-lived and spread right across the world. Neil Davey explains its importance in the UK and how you can get involved
July
Does food get more impressive than honey? Leaving aside the way it’s made – less miracle of nature, more actual magic – honey is a geographical, historical and scientific marvel.
Geographically, there doesn’t seem to be a culture that doesn’t use honey. Historically, that appears to have always been the case: honey is mentioned in the earliest forms of written history – circa 2,000 BCE – with references to honey and beekeeping in the sacred writings of India and Egypt, while cave paintings in Cuevas de la Araña in Spain depict humans foraging for honey some 4,000 years before that. Bees themselves – and thus wild honey – may predate this by some 100 million years, according to fossils found in Patagonia in South America. And scientifically, in addition to its most obvious use as a natural sweetener, honey is used as an anti-inflammatory, an antioxidant, an antibacterial agent, as well as many people’s default go-to for a sore throat (the Egyptians even used it as embalming fluid). Beyond that, due to various factors – its acidity, its lack of water and the presence of hydrogen peroxide – honey has no expiry date.
So what is honey? It’s defined, typically, as a sweet and viscous substance made by honeybees from nectar, a sugary liquid produced by flowers to attract such pollinators. The bees return to their hives, and pass the nectar on to other worker bees who chew it. It’s passed between bees until it becomes honey. It’s then deposited in waxy honeycombs, where fellow bees fan the liquid with their wings. This gets rid of excess water and condenses the sugar. The bees will eat the honey later in the year when fresh nectar is scarce. Well, unless a human (or something else with a sweet tooth) comes along and helps themselves to it.
So, as well as ensuring our plants get pollinated and grow successfully – thus feeding most of the planet and saving lives again – bees also produce this… miracle.
And did we mention, it’s utterly delicious? It’s not just about sweetness, either. ‘The different flavours you can get are something that really excites me,’ says Tom Kemble, who’s recently moved to oversee Chalk
