BeeLovedHoney.com

Health Benefits Of Honey

Raw honey is a food noted for its exceptionally high enzyme content. Other nzyme-rich raw foods include bee pollen, raw vegetables and fruits, cold pressed extra virgin olive oil, raw dairy foods, lacto-fermented dairy products like yogurt and kefir and cultured or fermented foods such as miso and sauerkraut. Grains, nuts, legumes, and seeds are rich in enzymes as well as other nutrients, but they also contain enzyme inhibitors like phytic acid. This is why some people choose to soak and sprout these foods in order to deactivate the enzyme inhibitors. It needs to be emphasized that these foods must not be heated above 110 F so that the enzymes are viable and available. Beeloved honey is strictly raw and unheated, thus retaining the maximum enzyme content.

As mentioned above, because our honey is raw and unheated, the maximum enzyme content and health benefits are present for the consumer. Honey contains more than 75 different compounds, among them are; enzymes, minerals and trace minerals, vitamins, proteins, carbohydrates, organic acids, and hydrogen peroxide. The enzymes in raw honey help to initiate the process of digestion and reduce the body’s need to produce digestive enzymes. Because of its high enzyme content, raw honey spares the enzyme reserves of the pancreas and other digestive organs. They won’t be constantly stimulated to produce and secrete various digestive enzymes. Wonderful long-term benefits of this enzyme-sparing activity are good for health, increased longevity and energy, fewer illnesses, and a healthy immune system. In this way, one can see the importance of including raw, unheated honey in the diet.

To learn more about the health benefits of honey, we highly recommend Joe Traynor's book "Honey, The Gourmet Medicine".

Cooking With Honey

Honey has many unique flavors and is rich in history. It can be used in diverse ways: from baked goods, to a topping for ice cream, to a glaze for meat, or a sweetener for tea.

Baked goods stay moister when made with honey. Honey is hygroscopic in nature, meaning it draws moisture from the air. Your bread, cake or cookies will not dry out as fast as those made without honey. Foods made with honey continue to improve in flavor after baking and will be even better the second day; for this reason honey-baked goods make excellent gifts and are especially suitable for mailing long distance.

When measuring honey for cooking, measure in a cup thinly coated with oil. This allows the honey to slide right out of the cup. Better yet, if the recipe calls for oil, measure the oil first in the same cup as the honey.

The question often arises as to how to convert recipes from sugar to honey. There is no simple hard and fast rule, but here are a few tips. In quick breads, cakes or cookies the general rule is to substitute 2/3 cup honey for each cup of sugar. Also reduce the amount of liquid by 1/4 cup for each cup of honey used. You also will need to add a little more leavening agent - usually 1/2 teaspoon baking soda for each cup of honey used. In addition, remember to lower the oven temperature by 25 degrees because foods baked with honey tend to brown faster. Honey will also provide a firmer, heavier texture.

When only small amounts of sweetener are uses such as in yeast breads or salad dressings, you do not need to adjust the recipe to substitute honey for the other sweetener.

In most fruit pies, use 1/4 cup less honey than sugar, but increase the thickening agent by 1/2 (flour, corn starch, eggs). Honey does have more of a sweetening power. In addition it brings out the flavor of the fruit.

If all the adding and subtracting of ingredients sounds like too much trouble to use honey, then use the link below, the recipes there already include the honey and take all the guess work out of your cooking.

For Honey Recipes visit: http://www.honey.com/consumers/recipes/recipes.asp

Some Honey History & Other Facts

Honey, a pure, natural sweetener prepared by bees from nectar collected from wild and cultivated flowers. It is frequently mentioned in the Bible and other ancient writings. It has been said that honey bees were not native to North America; and that early settlers brought bee colonies to the East Coast States.

Honey is considered a solid and is sold by weight. Honey is itself a preservative, three-thousand year old honey found in Egyptian tombs was still edible. Only when the honey’s moisture content rises above 18% does it have the risk of spoiling. Many people think that crystallized honey has spoiled. This is not the case; all honey will revert into sugar. Because of the variations in nectar, some honey will crystallize faster than others. To re-liquefy honey, simply warm the jar of honey in a pot of hot water. DO NOT over heat the honey; keep the temperatures at or below 110 degrees F to preserve the natural live enzyme content of the honey. Low temps, under 70 degrees F will cause honey to crystallize faster; store honey in the pantry with other dry goods. Honey can be frozen, but never store honey in the refrigerator, this will quickly crystallize the honey.

To make honey from nectar, honey bees evaporate much of the moisture and add compounds called enzymes that change the composition of the nectar. Some of the complex sugars are broken down into simpler ones; and some of the sugar is converted into an edible acid called gluconic acid. This process helps to give honey it's distinctive taste. When the moisture content of the honey is reduced to about 17%, the bees fill the small cells of the comb and seal them with a white beeswax capping. We can then remove the sealed combs from the beehives to use them on our table as comb honey or to have them extracted for use as liquid honey. You need not worry about eating the wax with the honey because beeswax is a completely wholesome product.

When bees have access to large areas of one kind of flower, such as sage, clover, blackberry, wildflowers, or buckwheat, they produce honey with a flavor and color typical of that particular plant. Bees also make natural blends of honey from many different flowers in areas where no one flower predominates.

The color and flavor of honey depends solely on the floral source from which the nectar was collected. Honey flavors range from mild and bland to strong and pungent. The color ranges from black to white. Pigment (color) begins in the nectar at the plant and is transported back to the hive. It is intensified by the natural process that the bees put it through (reducing the moisture level, etc.). Darker colored honey does not mean lesser quality; it means a different source of nectar and a different taste of honey. By trying different honeys, you can find the ones you enjoy most.

Why Buy U.S.A. Produced Honey?

U.S.A. honey production is subject to rules and regulations (inspections, sanitation, chemical use restrictions, etc.). U.S.A. honey is produced by your friends and neighbors. U.S.A. honey is one of the products of the bees who pollinate many crops that directly or indirectly supply all of us with a very large portion of our food. Honey bees are vital to agriculture and our nations food supply; while gathering nectar to produce honey, bees are transferring pollen. The USDA estimates that one third of the food supply benefits from honeybee pollination. In summation U.S.A. honey provides wages for our families, food for our tables, and pollination for our crops.

Beeswax & Beeswax Candle Info

Beeswax is a byproduct of honey production. It makes wonderful lip balms, hand lotions, hand creams, moisturizers, in cosmetics, wood finishes, waxes, leather polishes; waterproofing products, and dental molds.

It is impervious to water and unaffected by mildew. It has a liquid melting point of 140 to 145 degrees F. It is flammable when subjected to fire and flames. It is pliable at 100 degrees F.

Beeswax is produced by the worker honeybees. The wax is secreted from wax glands on the underside of the bee's abdomen and is molded into six-sided cells which are filled with honey, then capped with more wax. When honey is harvested, the top layer of wax that covers the cells called the cappings, must be removed from each hexagon-shaped cell. These cappings are saved and collected for use in many products, namely our 100% pure beeswax candles.

Bees must eat about six pounds of honey to secrete a pound of wax. For every 100 pounds of honey a beekeeper harvests, about only one to two pounds of beeswax are produced.

Beeswax naturally comes in many shades of gold, yellow and cream. The color of the wax is determined by the type of plants the bees collect nectar from.

If you are going to burn candles in your home, you cannot find a healthier or more cost efficient product than 100% Beeswax candles. Beeswax makes superior, slow burning candles that burn longer and more beautifully than any other wax. It exudes a faint, natural fragrance of honey and pollen.

What is Bloom?

Bloom is a dusty appearing substance that appears on the surface of 100% beeswax. In reality, it is the result of soft oils in the wax coming to the surface. Many people like bloom, but it can give the appearance that the color of the wax is fading or the candle is dust covered. It is not harmful and can easily be removed. A smooth wax may be buffed with a soft cloth or a nylon stocking. An easier fix, especially for textured wax, is to blow a warm hair dryer lightly on the surface. Watch the bloom disappear.

The Positive effects of Negative Ions when burning 100% pure beeswax.

Science has proven that, microscopically, any ‘thing’ floating in the air, be it in your home, office or outdoors, is doing so because it has become 'positively charged'. This includes everything from dust and pollen to toxic residues and emissions coming from household furnishings, rugs, construction materials, including viruses, bacteria and germs. Even odors such as food smells from cooking, household pets, mold and mildew, all remain ‘smelly’ because they are ‘positively charged’, and suspended in the air and thus, are readily inhaled by us.. These toxins become positively charged by static electricity, like the friction from walking across carpets or from the 'dry', recycled air produced by the heating systems we all use, as well as the flow of electricity require by all our appliances, such as refrigerator motors, computers, etc.

It is an proven fact that people feel better when they go to the ocean and breathe in the sea air. We have the same exhilarating experience when visiting waterfalls, in the woods or just about anywhere after a fresh rain and thunderstorm. This is the wonder of nature as each of these natural phenomena creates and pump an abundance of negative ions into the air, leaving the air so clean and balanced that we can both smell and feel the difference. With all of this in mind, we present the most important fact about Pure Beeswax, and that is that 100% pure beeswax is the only fuel to emit these air cleansing Negative Ions while burning.

So when negative ions (created by burning only 100% pure beeswax candles) are released into a stagnant, positively charged, indoor environment, those particles bearing the positive charge (toxins, dust, odors, etc.) are immediately and rapidly attracted to and then bind with the negatively charged ions produced by the burning beeswax.

Now, what once were positively charged, floating toxins, are no longer suspended, because after bonding with the negative ions, they have changed their ‘molecular state’ and are much heavier, so they simply fall out of the air. The result is an indoor living space with cleaner air for you and your loved ones to breathe.

Why you should burn only 100% beeswax candles made in the US in your home.

Not all beeswax candles are created the same...many advertised beeswax candles can legally contain as little as 10% beeswax, the remainder of these candles are usually paraffin. This contaminates the beeswax and it will not emit negative ions when burned.

Remember, all candles are classified under the same category as ‘cosmetics’ by the government, and therefore, receive very little to no regulation for purity nor scrutiny for ‘truth in labeling’. By law, a candle can contain as little as 10% actual beeswax, (with the remainder being paraffin and other toxic fillers) and still be legally sold as a ‘beeswax candle’.

All of our beeswax candles are 100% pure US beeswax cappings from California hives. We add nothing to the beeswax, and we use only 100% pure cotton wicks. Most paraffin candles you buy in the store are produced outside the of the US with wicks made of toxic lead cores or other materials that are harmful to your health.

The problems with Paraffin.

Paraffin has many health ramifications. Anyone with allergies, or environmental sensitivities, will tell you of the negative effects of burning paraffin. .

Paraffin is a petroleum by-product, it starts as a grayish-black sludge. It is the substance left over after producing many common petroleum products such as gas, oils, pavement, etc.

This grayish-black sludge is then refined and bleached with 100% strength bleach (creating dioxins, which are toxic), laundry bleach is only 10% bleach. The grayish-black sludge becomes a white sludge and is then processed into solid paraffin using various carcinogenic, solidifying chemicals.