A Comparative Analytical Study of Fresh Honey Collected from Honey Comb of Apis Mellifera and Market Samples of Honey

Abstract

Honey is a natural product which was known to ancient seers of Ayurveda since Veda period. The nutritional and therapeutic benefits of honey were well known and also documented in authentic texts of Ayurveda. However the abundant availability of honey has gone decreasing since industrialization and deforestation. It has resulted in artificial culture and marketing of honey. The quality of such honey is matter of concern as it is easy to adulterate honey but is very hard to find out the difference between natural and adulterated honey. Considering this issue, present work has been planned to compare freshly collected natural honey and marketed samples of honey. For the comparative analytical study four different samples were collected. Three samples of three different pharmacies were procured from market (honey of branded Ayurvedic companies) and compared with collected honey sample from honeycomb of Apis mellifera. The collected four samples of honey have almost similar organoleptic characters i.e. colour, odour, taste and touch. Considerable differences are detected in physico-chemical analysis, nutritional value and HMF value. The observations are within normal range however the differences are suggestive of need of establishing quality control parameters based on source of honey, collection season, temperature and storage condition and also providing these details while labelling the samples. Finding of present study revealed that freshly collected natural honey have best desired attributes compared all three marketed samples.