Honey

Why not take a sweet break on your culinary journey? Honey is always a good idea and, like many other things, you can find it around Brive-la-Gaillarde.

The benefits of honey

Honey is often used in our local cuisine, making it a condiment in its own right. As well as its tasty qualities, honey is also good for your health. It has long been used for therapeutic purposes, notably as a healing agent and for its antibacterial properties. This use has been verified and validated by the scientific community.

Its composition, as we all know, is very sweet. However, unlike white sugar, which is essentially made up of sucrose, honey contains several types of carbohydrate: mainly fructose and glucose. The latter are more interesting from a nutritional point of view, as they are more easily assimilated by the body, which can obtain the fuel it needs to function. As a result, it is also very popular with sports enthusiasts, who find it a natural energy booster.

Another benefit is that it soothes sore throats and angina. Mix a spoonful of honey with lemon, heat it up and you've got a natural mouthwash.

This product is not recommended for diabetics.

How is honey made?

Honey is the fruit of the labours of tiny worker bees.
The bees gather nectar from flowers, which they store in their crop. The sugar content, colour and taste vary according to the plant. Once they are full, the foragers return to the hive to hand over to other bees for the second stage: loading the nectar with enzymes. They swallow and regurgitate the future honey several times in a row, before spreading it out in the honeycomb. The whole hive is then busy producing both a high level of ventilation and a rise in temperature to lower the level of water in the nectar. Once this has been achieved, the honey contains no more than 18% water. The alveoli are closed and completely impermeable.

The honey cannot be eaten as it is. This is when the beekeeper comes in. He will collect the frames from the artificial hives, uncap them and insert them into a machine called the "extractor". Using centrifugal force, the honey will flow out of the cells and can be collected. The honey then contains a few impurities. To ensure that it is clean, a filtration and maturation stage is necessary. Finally, the product is ready for packaging.

Thanks to its high sugar content, honey is one of the few products that does not go stale.

Where can you find honey in Corrèze?

In the Tourist Office shop, Place du 14 juillet in Brive, and at all the local markets.

You can also discover honeys produced in Corrèze at the Honey Fair, usually held in November in the Halle Georges Brassens.