Terri Janoulis, age 9, of Atlanta, Ga.,

What exactly is honey?

We often feel peeved to hear that candies and cookies, soda pop and other sugary sweets are only treats. They taste so good that we would like to eat them for breakfast, lunch and dinner. But Mother Nature is very strict. If you want a healthy body, she says, you must eat a balanced diet of meat and dairy products, vegetables and salad greens, If you want strong bones, bright eyes, shiny hair and pearly teeth, you must save those sugary sweets for special treats, However, Mother Nature is also kind. She added honey to our balanced diet and we can enjoy it with meals or between meals. In fact, it is a valuable food ‑ and honey is the sweetest of all sweets.

The story of honey begins in the garden, in the roadsides of blooming wild flowers and in fragrant clover meadows. In the summer sunshine, these places are bursting with blossoms„ some of them too tiny for us to notice. But the busy bees notice them and pass the news along to other busy bees in the hive. These fuzzy little princesses know that a flower makes nectar and keeps this sweet syrup deep in its blossomy throat,

The busy bees, one after another, dip down into flowery petals and sip up the syrupy nectar. Each bee has a special honey stomach which makes a few changes in the sweet nectar. This is the first step which changes flower nectar into honey. Back at the hive, the busy bee empties her honey stomach into one of the waxy white calls of a honey comb.

At this stage, we might say that the mixture is somewhat like cookie dough, which is tasty, but even better after it is cooked, Some of the moisture must be dried out of the honey batter, for the mixture is too wet. Some of the moisture dries up into the air.

If the weather is not good for drying, the bees will get together and make a breeze with their wings and, as every one knows, things dry better on a breezy day.

As the mixture dries, it becomes more like honey and less like nectar. It needs no more help from the bees, but it may take several slow weeks before the mixture has turned itself into ripened honey,

There are many kinds of sugar and the scientists have given them fancy names. Some are sweeter, some more useful than others ‑ and honey is made from the best of all sugars. One third of the mixture is dextrose, a sugar which gives us energy. About half of the mixture is levulose, the sweetest of all sugars. There are also vitamins in the honey brew and enzymes which the chemists tell us help to digest our food.

In olden days, honey was the only sweetener known. Cane and beet sugar are easier to handle in the kitchen and make firmer candies. But science is beginning to think that the old fashioned honey cooking was better for us. This delicious syrup, it seems, is full of all kinds of ingredients that the body can use.