Thank Goodness for Honeybees and Cinnamon trees!!!!  More on Honey and Cinnamon Wellness at healthyhanson.com


HONEYBEES - BUZZING WITH HEALTHY NUTRITION!

"Honey is a delicious treat spread on toast or eaten right out of the jar like Winnie the Pooh. But it is much more than just a yummy food product. 

Honey is the subject of a great deal of modern health research, and the results indicate this food deserves our closer examination.  A jar of honey likely loiters at the back of your kitchen board labeled either "Pasteurized" or "non-pasteurized".  We think of the pasteurization process as a health matter, ensuring products such as milk or apple juice are safe for mass consumption. However, the pasteurization of honey is a marketing issue not a health concern. The healing process in honey pasteurization extends the shelf life of the food by destroying the natural "seed" crystals that cause granulation and fermentation.  If packers want their product to remain liquid for a long period of time, as on grocery store shelves, pasteurization is a necessity.  If you've purchased raw or non-pasteurized honey and it crystallized over time, you may be tempted to discard it.  Actually, the crystallization process has nothing to do with its purity or moisture content, but depends on the proportion of the various sugars in the honey, which, in turn depends on the floral sources used by the bees.  In fact, honey keeps almost indefinitely.  Edible honey has been unearthed from Egyptian ruins.

  Honey is a powerhouse of nutrition, delivering fructose, glucose, water and other sugars, in addition to many enzymes, vitamins, minerals and amino acids.  In addition, it contains a host of antioxidants, which are used by the body to eliminated free radicals (nasty molecules which zip around in healthy cells and have the potential to damage them).  It therefore makes a good alternative to sugar in food and drink.

  Honey bees make and do things that are helpful to humans.  They are very interesting insects.  Honey bees provide us with honey, royal jelly, beeswax, and propolis.  They are very cooperative insects and have good colony structure.  They are the prime pollinators of the planet.  Honey bees are social insects.  A typical hive is divided primarily into worker bees and drones, ruled by the queen.  Now let's go find out the wonderful things that bees do that help us!

HONEY

  Honey bees have to go through a long process to make honey.  The house bee and the field bee are involved in the process.  First the field bee goes out and collects nectar, which it stores in an internal honey sac.  they bring it back to the hive and transfer it to the house bee tongue to tongue.  Then the house bee spreads a drop of nectar on the roof of a cell in a comb.  during the next could of days other house bees fan their wings over the nectar so that the moisture evaporates (nectar is 80% water and honey is 19% water).  Finally, more house bees cover every cell filled with modified nectar with a thin layer of wax.

  Honey is a product that honey bees make.  Humans use the honey for many different purposes.  Honey can be a substitute for sugar in many foods.  You can make ice cream with honey but you would have to lower the temperature in the freezer because honey lowers the freezing point.  Honey has a greater sweetening ability that sugar doesn't have.  One cup of honey weighs twelve ounces while one cup of sugar weighs seven ounces.

  Honey was also used in various ways in history.  Long ago priests used honey and cakes sweetened by honey in many religious ceremonies.  In roman times, Romans used honey as widely as sugar is now.  Honey was used for cooking, preserving meats, vegetables, fruits, sauces and dressing.  In Biblical sources it is said that honey was the first and last food that jesus Christ ate on Earth. 

ROYAL JELLY, "YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT!"

  Royal jelly is a secretion from workers' glands.  It is fed to the queen bee throughout her larval and adult life.  It is also fed to larvae for the first two and a half days.  It is a creamy milky white color, strongly acidi, has a prudent odor and bitter taste.  The queen eats only royal jelly, the worker bees eat some royal jelly and the drones eat the least amount.  royal jelly is high in protein and is rich in vitamins B,C and D.

  Royal jelly is used in many things such as in dietary supplement, additives in lotions, cosmetics and creams.  It is in demand as a human health food because it is known to improve human health.

BEESWAX

  Beeswax is a very helpful product.  Beeswax is s secretion from four gland on the underside of a worker bees'abdomen.  Some major uses of beeswax are cosmetics and candle making.  some minor uses are lotions, cold creams, ointments, salves, lipsticks, rouges, pill coatings, waterproofing, coatings for electrical apparatus, floor and furniture polishes, leather polishes, arts and crafts items, adhesives, crayons, inks, basketball molding, grafting wax, ski wax and ironing wax.

  Most of the world's beeswax comes from Africa.  Roman wax tablets were found in Egypt.  

  There are two ways to make beeswax candles.  There is the dipping method where the wicks were repeatedly dipped into a pool of melted beeswax.  There is also the pouring method where the wick is suspended and a dipper full of melted wax would be poured over it and would run off into a big container below.

POLLINATION

  Since many of our pollinators are now scarce, we are dependent on the honey bee to pollinate our crops.  Pollination starts when a field bee crawls around a plant blossom.  The honey bee is dusted with pollen.  Then the field bee flies over to another blossom with the pollen in its hair.  When the bee lands, the pollen falls onto this blossom's stigma.  Now a fruit, vegetable or other crop can grow.  Farmers actually rented colonies of bees to pollinate their crops.

CINNAMON TREES & CINNAMON BENEFITS 

  Cinnamon is the dried inner bark of an evergreen tree that is harvested during the rainy season when the bark is most flexible and easiest to work with.  There are various evergreens belonging to the cinnamomum family that produce cinnamon, but the highest grade cinnamon is from the cinnamomum zeylanicum tree indigenous to Sri Lanka.  In fact the name cinnamomum zeylanicum is derived from the former name of the island, Ceylon.

  A wild cinnamon tree can grow to 65 feet (20 meters) high, but trees used for harvesting are pruned down at about 2 years of age to produce an abundance of finer bark-yielding growth called, tillering.  Once the tree reaches 3 years of age it's harvested twice yearly following each rainy season.

  At harvest time the shoots are cut and the leaves and twigs are removed with the rough outer bark.  The shoots are then beaten to soften the tissues of the inner bark and make it easier to peel away in a complete strip.  Once peeled, the bark is placed in overlapping, extended layers then rolled to form long canes or quills that are sun-dried.  As the quills dry, the bark curls and becomes paper-like.  These long canes are later cut into cinnamon sticks.  Flakes left over from this process, called featherings are sold to make into  ground cinnamon powder or to be distilled into cinnamon oil.  Cinnamon trees can yield productive bark for about 45 years, after which they are replaced with a new seedling.

  Cinnamon has a rich history dating back 5,000 years when Arabs controlled the spice trade bringing cinnamon, from what was known then as the spice Islands, to sell in Nineveh, Babylon, Egypt and Rome.  Even Moses used cinnamon in a holy oil to anoint the ark.  By the 11th century spices were used in place of currency in many instances and during the spice wars that followed, control of cinnamon played a vital role.

  Cinnamon with its woody, mild yet exotic flavor is arguably the most popular spice in the world.  Aside from its many used in baking and cooking, it also provides a wonderful aroma to freshen the house.  Just boil 5 cups of water with a teaspoon of added cinnamon, then let it simmer on the stove to enjoy the smell of a spice that has intoxicated people for over five millennia!

CINNAMON AND HEALTH TIPS....see Honey and Cinnamon Wellness at healthyhanson.com