Why honey is bitter: what does it mean and should it taste like that

Most varieties of honey are characterized by a sweet taste and a specific floral aroma. Some varieties are tart or sour. Sweetness also differs in its structure or color. Occasionally there is a beekeeping product with a bitter aftertaste. Why bee honey is bitter, and whether it can be eaten, we will look into the details further.

Why honey is bitter

If a sweet tastes a bit bitter, it doesn't always mean it's spoiled.

Bees collect natural gift from different plants, respectively, its characteristics are different.

Bee products acquire a bitter taste for several reasons.

• Violation of the rules for pumping out and further storage. In this case, foreign impurities and bacteria causing fermentation get into the sweetness.
• Nectar is collected from plants that are naturally astringent. The coniferous variety contains a large amount of resins that give the delicacy unusual qualities. There are bitter-sweet notes in the chestnut gift. There are other varieties of honey plants with uncharacteristic nectar.
• An unpleasant rancid smell appears in the delicacy as a result of improper heat treatment when melting candied sweets. Dissolve the delicacy in a water bath, at a temperature of no more than 40 degrees. Unscrupulous beekeepers often violate the dissolution technology, as a result of which the product loses its nutritional and healing properties.
• So that the liquid, only pumped out natural gift is not candied, beekeepers add chemicals and impurities to it.In this case, a he althy and tasty product becomes bitter. The chemical composition of such a delicacy changes, in some cases it can harm the human body.

There is another important reason why sweetness becomes bitter and unpleasant. Bees collect nectar and pollen from various honey plants. But poisonous representatives of the flora can also be honey plants. From such a natural gift, a drunken, poisonous sweetness is obtained. The product causes serious poisoning and pain in the digestive organs.

Important! Experienced beekeepers carefully check the surrounding areas for poisonous plants before releasing insects.

Honey varieties with bitterness

There are varieties of flower gift, which are characterized by natural bitterness. In this case, impurities in the delicacy appear due to the essential substances contained in honey plants.

• Dandelion bee gift is characterized by many useful and healing properties. But the taste of such a product is bitter and rarely used as a favorite treat.
• Heath nectar is also characterized by a bitter taste, so it is used exclusively for preventive and therapeutic purposes.
• Very rare and fragrant chestnut bee product is also characterized by astringent taste. Such nectar is a storehouse of vitamins, useful and nutrients.

Bitterness and astringency are characteristic of cornflowers or rapeseed. But in a coniferous or green healing gift, bitterness is caused by resins that are collected by insects to make bee glue.

Important! Uncharacteristic taste and smell can appear in honey after mixing different varieties of flower nectar.

When should honey not be bitter?

Natural bitterness is due to specific honey plants. But there are cases when the product of beekeeping acquires an artificial unpleasant taste and aroma.

If stored incorrectly, the delicacy begins to ferment, which causes a bitter aftertaste. Such honey is subjected to heat treatment and is safely eaten.

Wrong taste comes from nectar that is stored at elevated temperature or melted in violation of the rules.

In other cases, the gift of beekeeping should not have a bitter taste and no characteristic aroma.

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