What is involved in the chemical process of chaning nectar into honey?

Question

How are different colors and tastes acheived?

Answer 1

"Most flower nectars are similar to sugar water -- sucrose mixed with water. Nectars can contain other beneficial substances as well.

An enzyme, invertase, converts most of the sucrose into two six-carbon sugars, glucose and fructose. A small amount of the glucose is attacked by a second enzyme, glucose oxidase, and converted into gluconic acid and hydrogen peroxide. The gluconic acid makes honey an acid medium with a low pH that is inhospitable to bacteria, mold, and fungi, organisms we call microbes, while the hydrogen peroxide gives short-range protection against these same organisms when the honey is ripening or is diluted for larval food. Honey bees also reduce the moisture content of nectar, which gives it a high osmotic pressure and protection against microbes."

http://animals.howstuffworks.com/insects...

Honey consists of a mixture of sugars, mostly glucose and fructose. In addition to water (usually 17-20%) it also contains very small amounts of other substances, including minerals, vitamins, proteins and amino acids. A very minor, but important component of most honey is pollen.

These other substances give different tastes and colors.

The different colors and tastes are induced by different sorts of plants the bees visit:

The bees are transported to fields of flowering rape, acacias, oranges f.e. so that they mainly collect nectar from these single sort of plant.

In this way one gets acacia honey, orange honey, rape honey and so on.

Here you find features of the different types of honey:

http://www.mielecamerini.it/our_differen...

The Honeydew Honey is an exception and is not made by bees:

Distinctive honey from uncultivated and forested zones.  It is distinctive from other honeys for the fact that it comes from the sugary secretions of the leaves of some arboreal essence and shrubs that is caused by specific types of aphids (metcalfa pruinosa).

Here you find how to process honey:

http://www.howtopedia.org/en/How_to_Proc...