**1. Introduction**

Honey is produced by honeybees from the nectar of flowers or from secretions from the living parts of plants or from vegetable sap by sucking insects that remain on the living parts of the plant. Bees collect and transform this material with their own specific substances before

© 2016 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2017 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

storing it and leaving it to mature in separate honeycombs [1–3]. Honey is characterized as a semi-liquid product, comprising a complex mixture of carbohydrates, especially the monosaccharides glucose and fructose; and other sugars, enzymes, lactones, wax, pigments, vitamins, amino acids, minerals, organic acids and pollen [4]. Its chemical composition varies according to the bee species, weather conditions, type of soil, physiological state of the colony, nectar source and honey maturity [5]. Its nutritional quality, which occurs due to the presence of minerals and vitamins, sensory properties, medicinal properties such as antioxidant and antiseptic activity, specific therapeutic properties, such as for the treatment of inflammatory and infectious processes, and high energy content attract many consumers [6, 7].

In Brazil, Normative Ruling No. 11 of October 20, 2000, which regulates the standardization of honey for marketing purposes, is based on European laws and approves only honey produced by bees of the Apis genus [3]. The physicochemical analyzes indicated by Brazilian legislation for the identity and quality of honey produced by bees from the Apis genus are moisture, sucrose, reducing sugars, ash, minerals, acidity, diastase activity, color and hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) content [3]. These analyses contribute to the supervision and control of the quality of honey produced in Brazil and intended for export, and the results are compared with both Brazilian standards and those of international organizations [5, 8], see **Table 1**. Some concerns exist regarding the quality of domestically produced honey, and such tests allow the quality of imported honey to be inspected [5].

The aim of this chapter is to significantly contribute to the improvement of techniques that evaluate the quality of honey, and to propose an adjustment to the physicochemical parameters established by Brazilian law [3], adding additional analysis such as pH, formaldehyde index (mL kg−1), electric conductivity (mS cm−1), protein (%), total reducing sugars (%), viscosity (mPa s) and water activity. These analyzes can contribute effectively to control the quality of commercially available honey. The analysis required by existing legislation combined with


**Table 1.** National and international standards for honey from *Apis mellifera* L.

the further analysis proposed by this chapter will allow important parameters for the quality of honey to be determined, such as maturity, purity, deterioration and adulteration.
