What is the possibility that the characteristics in a plant such as orange, acacia, lime, chestnut, or any other floral plant, may be the same in honey produced from such floral sources?
Characteristics of floral elements being derived in the honey are great because finally the origin is the flower , although apparently the appearance or smell may not be the same !
All varieties of the honey has its unique physio-chemical and biochemical characteristics depends to geography, floral sources ( bees collect nectar approximately 2 mi. around hive) and kind/breed of the bees.
Short answer - each colony of bees made its unique honey ( US have a little more than 2 mil. of bee colonies).
For the high aroma Australian honeys, the levels of volatiles are orders of magnitude higher than in other world honeys. Liittle work has compared floral or nectar composition with Australian honey volatiles, but my work has shown that you can use GS-MS and PCA to determine their floral species origin. It is just too difficult to collect flowers and nectar when a honey flow of nectar occurs, due to the trees being very tall and in very hard to get at locations.
i mean to say if honey is collected from a floral source whose antioxidant activity is high like saffron.Is it possible that saffron honey will posses more antioxidant activity than others
Yes, logically it should have in fact more anti- oxidant activity since is supposed to be a concentrated extract, but it needs to be checked !
@Jaya Madam
As per research is concerned it has been shown that Bioactive substances may
be transferred from the plant to the nectar and further to honey by
imparting to the final product .The main sources of honey phenolic compounds are plants.Plants biosynthesize a great number of various phytochemicals,
which may possess health-promoting properties, antioxidants being
the major group of bioactive constituents; they are considered
as natural agents, which might reduce the risk of oxidative
damage in living cells (The National Honey Board 2002). Many
studies show that honey, depending on the floral source, possesses
higher or lower antioxidant, antibacterial, or radical-scavenging
activity (Weston and others 1999; Gheldof and Engeseth 2002;
Baltruˇsaityt˙e and others 2007a, 2007b).
Interesting discussion. Here in Northern Kenya, I have come across two different honey types based on colour. The Samburu pastoralists explained that the black coloured honey was from the mountain trees (many tree spp) whereas the brown/orange type was from the lowland areas full of acacia trees. It may be interesting to use the method suggested by Bruce D' Arcy to help confirm or dismiss the perception by local that the black honey is more medicinal than the brown/orange coloured one. The study may also give insights into the levels and type of antioxidants, antibacterial effects (if any) and many other biopotent compounds therein. In the face of climate change accelerating desertification process, conserving such tree species is not only vital to the honey bee population, pollination and food security but to healthy environmental condition. Food and Nutrition Researchers worldwide need to link up as we see in wheat research.
Our research on antioxidant contents of various honey have indicated clearly that plants are responsible for the different concentrations and types of organic compounds present in honey. When screening honey from Iran, my Ph D student discovered that the highest level of antioxidant was found in saffron honey.
In my PhD thesis I worked on honey volatiles: isolation techniques, botanical discrimination based on volatiles and correlation of honey volatiles with plant blossom extracts. In most cases, low molecular weight components found in nectar were not detected in honey or the aboundance was very different. Additionally, most of honey phenolics are probably derived from plant aminoacids.
You may want to check my publications in my profile. If you have any more questions, please free to conact me.
I dont think , the same quality of honey would be produced from the plants varying so much in their floral and pollination behaviour, especially when you compare the acacia versus orange..?
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