Honey specifications

Muller U, Helbling A, Bischof M Predictive value of venom-specific IgE, IgG and IgG subclass antibodies in patients on immunotherapy with honey bee venom. Allergy 1989 44 412-418. 

A number of allergens from both honey bee and vespid venoms have been cloned and expressed by either Escherichia coli or baculovirus-infected insect cells (table 1) phospholipase Aj [20], hyaluronidase [21], acid phosphatase [13] and Api m6 [14] from honey bee venom, as well as antigen 5 [22], phospholipase A and hyaluronidase [23] from vespid venom, and dipeptidylpeptidases from both bee and Vespula venoms [15, 16]. Their reactivity with human-specific IgE antibodies to the respective allergens has been documented [11-16, 22, 23] and their specificity is superior... 

Nielsen J. Haeberli G Hymenoptera venom allergy analysis of double positivity to honey bee and Vespula venom by estimation of IgE antibodies to 38 species-specific major allergens Api ml and Ves v5. Allergy 2009 64 543-548. 

The diastase activity was traditionally determined according to the Schade method in the earlier years (Schade et al., 1958). One unit of diastase activity (or more specifically, a-amylase), DN, is defined as that amoimt of enz)nne that converts 0.01 g of starch to the prescribed endpoint in 1 h at 37 °C under the experimental conditions. In this assay, a standard solution of starch, which reacts with iodine to produce a color solution, is used as a substrate for honey enzymes under the standard conditions (Rendleman, 2003). A recently developed procedure uses an insoluble, dyed starch substrate (Persano Oddo and Pulcini, 1999). As this substrate is hydrolyzed by ot-amylase, soluble dyed starch fragments are released into solution. After reaction termination and insoluble substrate removal by centrifugation, absorbance of the supernatant solution (at 620 nm) is measured. The absorbance is proportional to the diastase activity. This procedure has been widely adopted in the honey industry due to the convenience of a commercially available substrate and the simple assay format. 

In general, CE is simple, rapid, and low cost because it needs neither laborious treatment of the samples nor long times of analysis. However, its high detection limit is a major limitation of CE. CE is often poorly reproducible. Enzymatic assay is more suitable for quantifying one organic acid in honey samples because it is specific, precise, and accurate. GC is more suitable for analyzing volatile or semivolatile chemicals. HPLC is versatile and reproducible. However, common HPLC detectors such as UV-VIS are not very sensitive for organic aliphatic acids. 

Some phenolic acids such as ellagic acid can be used as floral markers of heather honey (Cherchi et al., 1994 Ferreres et al., 1996a,b), and the hydroxyciimamates (caffeic, p-coumaric, and ferulic acids) as floral markers of chestnut honey (Cherchi et al., 1994). Pinocembrin, pinobanksin, and chrysin are the characteristic flavonoids of propolis, and these flavo-noid compounds have been found in most European honey samples (Tomas-Barberan et al., 2001). However, for lavender and acacia honeys, no specific phenolic compoimds could be used as suitable floral markers (Tomas-Barberan et al., 2001). Other potential phytochemical markers like abscisic acid may become floral markers in heather honey (Cherchi et al., 1994). Abscisic acid was also detected in rapeseed, lime, and acacia honey samples (Tomas-Barberan et al., 2001). Snow and Manley-Harris (2004) studied antimicrobial activity of phenolics. 

Aminoacetophenone was detected to be specific to Italian chestnut honeys (Bonaga and Giumanini, 1986). 

Inoue, K., Murayama, S., Seshimo, F., Takeba, K., Yoshimura, Y., and Nakazawa, H. (2005). Identification of phenolic compound in manuka honey as specific superoxide anion radical scavenger using electron spin resonance (ESR) and liquid chromatography with coulometric array detection. /. Sci. Food Agric. 85, 872-878. 

Weber, A., Schroder, H., Thalberg, K. and Marz, L. (1987) Specific interactions of IgE antibodies with a carbohydrate epitope of honey-bee venom phospholipase-A2. Allergy 42, 464-470. 

Although the pyrolysis of some classes of polysaccharide materials has been studied quite extensively in the food, petrol and tobacco industry, very little has been published specifically on polysaccharide binders (arabic gum, tragacanth gum, fruit tree gum, honey and starch). The pyrolysis of glucane based polymers, especially cellulose, has been studied in detail [6,55], highlighting how anhydrosugars and furan derivatives are the main pyrolysis products, together with one-, two- and three-carbon aldehydes and acids. 

Hydrolysis of sucrose yields glucose and fructose with specific rotations [q ]d + 52.5° and —92°, respectively, and makes the resulting mixture laevorotatory (—). This phenomenon of sucrose is called the inversion of sucrose, and the resulting mixture is known as invert sugar, which is the main component of honey, and is sweeter than sucrose itself. 

---