Grim Egyptian Story

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ROACHMAN

House Bee
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I'm reading a book called "Robbing the Bees" at the moment which is about all the history of honey and beekeeping.

In the book there is a story of some Victorian explorers who stumbled across a sealed Egyptian tomb. Inside the tomb there were all the usual artifacts including a large sealed stoneware jar. They decided to open the jar and inside they found that there was honey so they proceeded to eat it, after a few mouthfulls one of the explorers noticed that there was a hair in his mouth so he decided to take a closer look in the jar to find to his horror that there was a mummified body of a child immersed. The honey had been used as a preservative.:drool5:
 
I'm reading a book called "Robbing the Bees" at the moment which is about all the history of honey and beekeeping.

In the book there is a story of some Victorian explorers who stumbled across a sealed Egyptian tomb. Inside the tomb there were all the usual artifacts including a large sealed stoneware jar. They decided to open the jar and inside they found that there was honey so they proceeded to eat it, after a few mouthfulls one of the explorers noticed that there was a hair in his mouth so he decided to take a closer look in the jar to find to his horror that there was a mummified body of a child immersed. The honey had been used as a preservative.:drool5:
Thats what you call adding a bit of body to it....
 
Good tale. It is true though that some honey sealed in air-tight underground Egyptian tombs (over 3000 years old) is still perfectly fine to eat.




Ben P
 
Thornes do a nice stainless double strainer that should remove 3000 year old Egyptian mummies quite adequately.
 
Combine this witht he Omlet beehaus and you have your own DIY tomb that will last forever...or until at least BAYER can bring you back to life:svengo:
 
Good tale. It is true though that some honey sealed in air-tight underground Egyptian tombs (over 3000 years old) is still perfectly fine to eat.
Ben P

Must be the stuff they sold in the corner shop when I was a kid...
 
I have been relating that story to students, and anyone else that asks, for years noting the 'use by' or 'best before' date being necessary under law but maybe just a tad too short. Of course storage conditions are also an important aspect, but for most honey these dates are fairly conservative.

Regards, RAB
 
My theory is that "best before" and "use by" dates are are only there for the benefit of the food industry.

I had to collect a van load of frozen herbs once that were going to be dumped because of shelf life.
Have seen labels on boxes being changed.
Products put into different boxes to cover up the country of origin.
Ice-cream that had started to thaw and then re-frozen.
 
Yep, I daresay cheap, as in 'unsaleable', chinese-sourced honey (containing excesses of antibiotics) blended (well, simply diluted) to reduce the nasties to just below the permitted limits. It all goes on somewhere, if not in the UK, and then sold as good product In the UK as well).

Regards, RAB
 
Somebody in Nofolk recently got done for buying cheap honey and re-labeling it.
 
If the one I am recalling, it cost them around one hundred thousand pounds!

And served them right, too.

Trading Standards are there to help the honest traders.
 
I believe they were fined in the order of £88,000. With costs and their Solicitors, etc., probably totalling in the region of a hundred grand or more, is what it cost them. A good result - if they paid!

Regards, RAB
 

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