Honey – Keeping Your Ancestors Pretty For Centuries

Posted by gspeed on Jan 6, 2009 in Animalia, Food | 0 comments

There isn’t much I  respect more than pickles, but honey comes pretty close. Honey doesn’t sound that appealing when you think about it, though: Bees ingest some pollen, regurgitate it, then they eat it again just to RE-regurgitate.  The process simply keeps repeating itself until they spit out the final product: Pure, golden, semi-digested honey.

In fact, the honey regurgitation process is a group effort and the hive’s drones hang out on a daily basis slurping up the concoction. Imagine a bar crowded with people. Each table is covered with pitchers of beer and friends sit around toasting their glasses, laughing and chugging down the brew. The difference here though, is that everyone spits the beer back into the pitcher after the last glass has been swallowed. Then, they can start drinking all over again. The good news is that it keeps tasting better. Yes, my friends, this is how honey is made. But, I’m sure you knew that already.

Did you also know that honey lasts forever? Even if you did, it is worth repeating. The bees change the chemical structure of the nectar and it becomes impervious to spoilage when stored correctly.  Honey is so thick with sugar that anything that lands on it-like harmful bacteria or mold-will just get the moisture sucked out of it and die. (Obviously honey exposed to moist air and water doesnt have an endless shelf-life.) 

Edible honey is even found in the tombs of Egypt-put there so that pharaohs would have something to snack on in the afterlife. On a similar note, honey was also used to embalm the dead back then, creating a sort of deliciously sweet, honey covered mummy jerky. This isn’t something unique to Egyptians either: Vlad Dracula’s head (belonging to the man who inspired so many vampire legends) was preserved in a jar filled with honey when it was presented to the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, while Scythians supposedly rolled their dead Kings around the country for months in a honey filled coffin.  

Honey may help keep the dead looking fresh, but there are less morbid uses for the stuff too: In Greece, honey symbolizes a ‘sweet marriage’ and it supposidly has healing properties ( only on the living, of course).

Either way, honey is a major part of history, and the bees that make it even more so. Just watch the Bee Movie and you’ll see how flawless my logic really is.