Honey from certain flowers is called "mad" honey. It is produced when bees collect nectar from rhododendrons, azaleas (both members of the genus Rhododendron) or mountain laurel (Kalmia latifolia), flowers whose nectars all contain chemicals, called grayanotoxins, that are psychoactive and toxic to humans but not to bees. Their effects are short lived, and symptoms include nausea, vomiting, sweating, and dizziness. Abdulkadir Gunduz and colleagues in Turkey report that "mad" honey is used locally in folk medicines as an alternative treatment for a variety of medical disorders such as gastrointestinal pain or hypertension; these claims have not been substantiated through appropriate medical testing, however.
In New Zealand, toxic honey can be found from a different source. Bees gather honeydew, a sweet secretion, from vine hopper insects, Scolypopa australis, that have fed on the toxic tutu bushes, Coriaria arborea. Symptoms of tutin poisoning in humans are vomiting, delirium, giddiness, stupor, and violent convulsions. Since December 2001, New Zealand beekeepers have been required to closely monitor the area within three kilometers of their hives where their bees might forage in order to prevent exposure to the toxin. There is a Brazilian plant, Serjania lethalis, which produces a honey so poisonous that it has been reported to be used by native hunters for tipping their arrows and killing fish. Flowers in the Sumac genus Rhus make nectar that produces dark red honey (this includes Rhus vernix, poison sumac; and Rhus toxicodendron, poison ivy), but this honey is not harmful to people.
Green or unripe honey from a few plants can cause an allergic reaction in some people, and in rare cases, honey results in an allergic reaction due to contamination with pollen allergens. Honey should be considered in any patient with a food allergy that cannot be identified, because if honey is an ingredient, the patient may be having a reaction to pollen allergens in the honey. Max Deinzer and colleagues investigated alkaloids that affect the liver (hepatotoxic) that are found in the plant tansy ragwort, Senecio jacobaea L., and in honey produced from its nectar. This plant is native to Europe but has widely invaded pasture lands in both North America and Australia.
These alkaloids have the potential to cause cancer, mutations, and birth defects in bees, and the researchers caution that they may pose health hazards to the human consumer. Most people can consume honey without incident, and all of these ill effects are quite rare. However, honey should not be given to children under the age of one because infants may be susceptible to botulism, an illness caused by Clostridium botulinum, a toxin-producing bacteria that is rarely found in honey.
Mead is a fermented alcoholic beverage made from honey and water. Eva Crane writes that this alcoholic beverage was probably produced thousands of years before the creation of beers and ales, and many drinks produced from fermented honey and other ingredients have been important in multiple cultures. Mead is sometimes called honey wine; although, because it is not made from grapes, it can't properly be called wine. When mead is made with the addition of flavorings such as ginger, cloves, cinnamon, or mace, the drink is called metheglin.
Bracket, also called bragget or braggot, is a type of beer brewed with more than 30 percent honey as a source of sugar, equivalent to mead brewed with malt. It was first produced as a byproduct of beekeeping in areas where grapes could not be grown, and, not unsurprisingly, it is rather sweet. Mead was mentioned in sacred texts as early as 2000 to 1100 b.c.e., and in ancient Greece mead was said to have been the preferred drink. Aristotle (384 to 322 b.c.e.) discussed mead in his Meterologica, and around 400 b.c.e. Plato recorded the behavior of a friend drinking nectar in the Garden of Zeus, when wine was not yet known. Hilda Ransome describes the role of mead and other bee products in multiple cultures, including Germanic myths, Welsh and Irish poems, and Mayan rituals.
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