Honey

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About honey
Honey is a sweet food made by honey bees using nectar from flowers. The variety produced by honey bees (the genus Apis) is the one most commonly referred to and is the type of honey collected by beekeepers and consumed by humans. Honey produced by other bees and insects has distinctly different properties.

Honey bees form nectar into honey by a process of regurgitation and store it as a food source in wax honeycombs inside the beehive. Beekeeping practices encourage overproduction of honey so that the excess can be taken without endangering the bee colony.

The main uses of honey are in cooking, baking, as a spread on breads, and as an addition to various beverages such as tea and as a sweetener in some commercial beverages. According to international food regulations, "honey stipulates a pure product that does not allow for the addition of any other substance...this includes, but is not limited to, water or other sweeteners". Honey barbecue and honey mustard are common and popular sauce flavors.

Honey is the main ingredient in the alcoholic beverage mead, which is also known as "honey wine" or "honey beer". Historically, the ferment for mead was honey's naturally-occurring yeast. Honey is also used as an adjunct in beer.

Clarified honey
Honey whose impurities have been forced to the top by boiling and removed by skimming

Extracted honey
Honey removed from the comb by a special machine called an extractor and sold in liquid or crystallized form.

Runny honey
A very sweet, thick fluid produced by honeybees from flower nectar. It is a natural sweetener that is used in many food dishes to increase the intensity of the flavor desired for the food. Honey is available in several different forms, in a range of colors from clear to dark brown, and a variety of flavors dependent on the flowering plants chosen by the bees, which can range from flowers grown on ground plants, bushes, or trees, such as chestnut and tupelo trees. It can be found in the form of comb honey, chunky honey or liquid honey from honey processors. The comb honey is a pure form, taken directly from the beehive as a comb with a layer of wax sealing the honey in the comb cells. The chuck honey is a bottled version of the comb honey with pieces of the comb mixed into the thick honey mixture. In both products, the honey and comb are edible, providing a sweet chewy delight. Liquid honey is processed honey that has been pasteurized to remove the comb and maintain the liquid form of the product.

Avocado honey
Its name is a misnomer. Avocado honey tastes nothing like the fruit, avocado. Collected from the California avocado blossoms, avocado honey is dark in color and has a fairly rich and buttery flavour. This honey originated in Southern Mexico and is now a common crop in Central America, Australia and other tropical regions.

Lavender honey
Lavender honey is a product produced by bees which pollinate lavender, usually near lavender farms, extracting the sweet essence of lavender from the lavender plant.