An effective and economic method to produce re-ripe honey with honeybee colonies

Abstract

Beekeepers who manage migratory beekeeping in China preferred to produce non-ripe honey rather than natural ripe honey in short flowering seasons, to obtain higher honey yield and profits. To explore an alternative method for production of ripe honey, we fed Apis cerana cerana colonies with non-ripe honey produced from Apis mellifera ligustica colonies to produce re-ripe honey. The production rate of re-ripe honey was 29.06%, which led to a high market profit considering price factors. The contents of glucose and fructose in re-ripe honey didn't change significantly, and small amounts of sucrose and maltose were detected. The amylase activity (39.06 mL/(g*h) in re-ripe honey significantly increased, compared with that (34.86 mL/(g*h)) in non-ripe honey. The types and relative content of volatile organic components, namely, alcohols and esters, in re-ripe honey were lower than those in non-ripe honey, indicating the milder and non-irritating aroma of the former. Dverall, the method raised by us is a practical approach to produce honey with high quality and economic values and could be easily accepted by the market.

Physicochemical, bioactive properties and antioxidant of Apis mellifera L. honey from western Paraná, Southern Brazil

“…The moisture content of the honey samples analyzed presented an average of 18.75% (Table 1), but 7% of them presented moisture content above the allowed limit (20%) (Brasil, 2000). Several factors may influence moisture content, such as the degree of maturity, environmental conditions during the harvest, processing techniques and conditions of storage (Silva et al, 2016;Guo et al, 2019).…”

A retrospective study: physicochemical properties of the flower honey from the Black Sea region of Turkey in different years

“…Besides, water content affects the basic physical characteristics of honey, such as viscosity, maturity, and crystallization (Machado De-Melo et al, 2018). Viscosity of ripe honey is higher, with water content of below 22%, leading to non growth of microorganisms and longer shelf life of ripe honey (Aparna & Rajalakshmi, 1999), and significantly improving the re-ripe honey market acceptance and increasing the beekeepers' profit given the the production rate (Guo et al, 2019). It is known that fermentation is another factor that affects the honey composition when moisture exceeds 18%, especially after a long storage time (Bogdanov et al, 2008).…”