INVESTIGATORY PROJECT

CHEMISTRY
ANALYSIS OF HONEY

AMBE SCHOOL, CBSE UNIT

MANJALPUR, VADODARA

NAME:

ANKUR GIRI

ROLL NO: 1
CLASS:

XII

INDEX

1 INTRODUCTION
2 AIM
3 THEORY
4 EXPERIMENT
5 OBSERVATION
6 RESULT
7 CONCLUSION
INTRODUCTION

Honey is a sweet food made by bees using nectar from

flowers.
The variety produced by honey bees (the genus Apis) id
the one most commonly referred to, as it is the type of
honey collected by most beekeeper and consumed by
people. Honeys produced by other bees (bumblebees,
stingless bees) and other hymenoptera insects (e.g.
honey wasps) have different properties, and discussed
only briefly in this article.

Honey bees convert nectar into honey and store it as a

primary food source in wax honeycombs inside the
beehive.
Honey gets its sweetness from the monosaccharides
fructose and glucose and has approximately the same
relative sweetness as granulated sugar. It has attractive
chemical properties for baking and a distinctive flavor
that leads some people to prefer it over sugar and other
sweeteners.

Honey is a mixture of sugar and other compounds. With

respect to carbohydrates honey is mainly fructose
(about 38%), making it similar to the synthetically
produced inverted sugar syrup, which is approximately
48% fructose, including maltose, sucrose, honey is
mostly sugars and contains only traces amounts of
vitamins or minerals.

AIM -:

To analyze the
available honey of
different minerals and
carbohydrates

Theory
Honey thick sweet super saturated sugar
solution manufactured by bees to feed their
larvae and for the subsistence during winter.
Bee honey is composed of fructose, glucose and
water in varying proportions. It also contains
serval enzymes and oil. The color and flavor
depends on the age of the homey and he
sources of the nectar.

Honey has a fuel a values of about 3307 Cal kg

[1520cal/lbs.]. It readily picks up moisture from
the air and is consequently used as a
moistening agent for tobacco and in baking.
Glucose crystallizes out of honey on standing at
room temperature, leaving on crystallized layer
of dissolved fructose. Honey is marketed usually
heated by a special process to about 66 c to
dissolve the crystals and is sealed to prevent

crystallization. The fructose in crystallized honey

ferments readily at about 160C.

EXPERIMENT

ANALYSIS OF HONEY
REQIREMENTS
Apparatus:
Test tubes, Test tube stand, Burner, Water Bath.

Chemicals:
Fehling solution A, Fehling solution B,
Ammonium chloride solution, Ammonium
phosphate, Concentrated Nitric acid and phenol.

Procedure
TEST FOR MINERALS
1. Test for Potassium:Take 2ml of honey in a test tube and picric acid
solution is added. Yellow precipitate indicates
the presence of K+.

2. Test for Magnesium:Take 2ml of honey in a test tube and add NH4CL
solution is added to it and then excess of
ammonium phosphate solution is added. The
side of the test tube is scratched with glass rod.
White precipitate indicates the presence of Mg2+
ions.

TEST FOR CARBOHYDRATES

1. Fehlings test:
Take 2ml of honey in a test tube and 1ml each
Fehling solution A and Fehling solution B are
added to it and boiled. Red precipitate indicates
the presence of reducing sugars.
2. Tollens test:
Take 2-3ml of aqueous honey in a test tube. 2ml
of Tollens reagent is added. The test tube is
kept in a boiling water bath for about ten

minutes. A shining silver mirror indicates the

presence of reducing carbohydrates.

OBSERVATION TABLE
Substance Taken: HONEY
Sr.
TESTS
OBSERVATI INFERENC
NO
ON
E
1.
Test for
Potassium:Yellow ppt. Potassium
is observed
is
Honey + Picric
present.
acid
Solution
2.
Test for
Magnesium:White ppt. Magnesiu
is not
m is
Honey +
observed
absent.
NH4OH(till
solution
becomes
alkaline) +
(NH4)3 PO4
3.
Fehlings test:Honey + 1ml

Red ppt. is

Reducing

4.

each of Fehlings
solution A and
Fehlings
solution B
Tollens test:Honey + 2-3mL
Tollens reagent,
test tube in
water bath for
10 minutes

observed

sugar is
present.

Shining
silver is
observed

Reducing
carbohydr
ate is
present

RESULTS

Potassium is present.
Magnesium is absent.
Honey contains reducing sugar.
Honey contains reducing carbohydrates.

CONCLUSIONS
Honey is composed of sugar (about 76%), water
(18%) and other ingredients that make up about
6%. Sugar gives the main characteristics of
honey (sweetness), water and components that

are found in small quantities determine the

difference between various types of honey.
These differences are the color, aroma and
taste.
Sugar:
It consists of three kinds of sugar these are the
fruit sugar (fructose), which has among the
highest (41%), grape sugar (glucose), which has
about 34% of ordinary sugar (sucrose) which is
between 1 and 2%. The ratio of one type of
sugar to other depends of the source i.e. flowers
pasture, and to some extent on enzyme
invertase which break down regular sugar in
grape and fruit. This enzyme is located in the
flower from which bees collect nectar, but it is
also present in the bees body.
Minerals:
From the test performed above we conclude that
honey contains potassium but not magnesium.

REFRENCE:
NCERT Chemistry textbook-part2
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