Chemical analysis of summer honeys collected from Apis dorsata hives of Chandrapur Tahsil of Chandrapur District of Maharashtra State (India)

The present investigation was undertaken to determine the chemical analysis of 5 summer honey samples (CHN-CHN-LOH, CHN-CHN-AJA, CHN-CHN-NAN, CHN-CHN-URJ, and CHN-CHN-CHI) collected from forest area of Chandrapur Tahsil of Chandrapur District of Maharashtra State (India). These samples were analyzed for several parameters such as moisture, total reducing sugar, Levulose or Fructose, Dextrose or Glucose, L/D ratio, Sucrose, Acidity. This type of chemical analysis favours the utilization of the honey for good quality in this area.


Introduction
Honey is a carbohydrate rich naturally complex product produced by honey bees from floral nectar. Honey has been used by all civilizations as nutrient food and in traditional medicine. The quality of honey depends on various physiological factors such as climate, soil, etc. Honey contains Sugar, Protein, Moisture, Vitamins, Minerals, Enzymes, Polyphenols and Flavonoids (Al ML -Manary et al., 2002) because of this unique complex nature, honey is proved to be useful in the treatment of burns, wounds, skin ulcers as an antioxidant and iin the treatment of external eye diseases (Balsubramanyam, 2011). Furthermore, honey is a highly valuable ingredient in condiments, beverage, sauces and sweets. In fact numerous studies have been reported on physical, chemical and melissopalynological parameter of honeys from all over the world.

Material and methods
Chemical analysis of the honeys are carried out by using Indian Standard Specification, IS: 4941 (1974) and IS: 8464 (1977). The percentage of Total Reducing Sugar, (Levulose or Fructose + Dextrose or Glucose), Levulose, Dextrose, Sucrose, Acidity, Moisture and L/D ratio were estimated.

Results and discussion
The  In the present study moisture content in the sample ranges from 23-26. Increase in the temperature moisture is low and decrease the temperature moisture is high. Increase in moisture content of honey is also indicative of adulteration. The low moisture content of honey forms an important part of the system which protect honey from attack by microorganism.

Sugars
Honey consists of mostly Glucose and Fructose. The actual proportion of Fructose to Glucose in any particular honey, depends largely on the sources of the nectar. All samples contained more Fructose than Glucose.
This indicated that Chandrapur honeys would be less prone to granulation Fructose level in honey is higher than that of Glucose. Honey with high Fructose to Glucose ratio would remain liquid for longer period. The Fructose/Glucose ratios may have an impact or honey flavor, since fructose is much sweeter than glucose.

Acidity
Acidity of the honey sample ranges by 0.2369-1.278 respectively. Acidity values may indicative the fermentation of honey sugar by yeast.

Conclusion
Method enabling the examination of several parameters which would provide the quality of bee honey within a short period of time are needed modern techniques which have been developed and validated over the past few years provide high precision and accuracy but need further improvement so that the natural bee honey available on the market can be tested as quickly and reliably as possible further research into method of honey quality assessment should focus on developing techniques of rapid evaluation of the botanical origin of honey since the principle method currently in use, the melitttopalynological method is very time consuming requires considerable experience botanical knowledge as well as knowledge of the honey production process. It produces inconclusive result which can be difficult to interpret meorever it is necessary to devise quick reliable and expensive methods for detecting honey adulteration as an overview of current method of honey quality assessment, this paper can help shape the direction of future research in this field.