Honey & Sucrose

One honeybee produces about 1/12 tsp. of honey over the course of its lifetime, according to "The Encyclopedia of Healing Foods." To make 1 lb. of honey, approximately 60,000 bees must collect and process the nectar from as many as 2 million flowers. Honey is mostly composed of the simple sugars glucose and fructose, irrespective of its distinctive source of pollen, color, flavor and texture. It also contains water, small amounts of acids, proteins and minerals, and various amounts of other sugars, including sucrose.

Sugars in Honey

The monosaccharides glucose and fructose are the primary components of honey, followed by water. Maltose, maltulose, turanose, isomaltose and sucrose are some of the disaccharides -- two simple sugars linked together -- that make up less than 10 percent of honey's composition. Honey also contains minor amounts of oligosaccharides, or "higher sugars" that are made up of more than three sugar subunits. Of all the sugars in honey, fructose is the sweetest. Honey that contains a higher percentage of fructose than glucose tends to be the sweetest. One teaspoon of honey contains 22 calories.

Sucrose

Sucrose, commonly known as table sugar, is formed when a glucose molecule links to a fructose molecule. All plants produce some amount of sucrose, but sugar cane and sugar beets produce it in huge quantities. Sucrose is extracted from these plants in crystalline form and processed into numerous sugar products, including brown sugar, granulated sugar, evaporated cane juice and molasses. Sucrose isn't as sweet as fructose, but it's sweeter than glucose. In any of its processed forms, the flavor, texture, color and composition of sucrose is consistent. One teaspoon of sucrose contains 16 calories.

Honey Vs. Sucrose

Honey has been harvested and used as a sweetener since prehistoric times. The ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans were all avid beekeepers. For much of human history, honey was the main source of concentrated sweetness, because it's available year-round and is ready for consumption straight from the hive. Prior to the 18th century, sucrose was a rare commodity. Slave labor on sugar cane plantations allowed it to become freely and cheaply available to the world. By the mid-19th century, refined sucrose surpassed honey in popularity -- partly because it was cheaper, but also because of its distinctive and reliable flavor.

Considerations

Although humans may consider raw honey to be unprocessed, it's actually highly processed by honeybees. Nectar is mostly water with a small amount of sugars, so after forager bees collect it, hive bees regurgitate the nectar repeatedly to reduce its water content. Invertase, an enzyme in bee saliva, breaks down most of the sucrose in the nectar into its component simple sugars, fructose and glucose. This conversion process is what makes honey up to 1 1/2 times sweeter than table sugar, because fructose is about 70 percent sweeter than sucrose, according to the book "Honey, I'm Homemade."