3.2.1. Total Sugar Content in Honey Samples Sucrose Content

In 2.4%, or 6/251 samples of honey, non-compliance with the UAE honey standard was only due to sucrose content being higher than the 5% limit permitted. This level of non-compliance was lower than the 53.5% non-conformity, due to the high sucrose found among the 43 honey samples that originated in Iran [25]. During another study conducted by Gürbüz et al. (2020), sucrose was not detected in 55.9% or 38/68 honey samples collected from the Southeastern Anatolia region of Turkey [26]. The sucrose content of the remaining 30 samples (44.1%) was less than the legally permissible maximum value of 5%. In other work involving 9 honey samples collected from southern Tunisia it was found that the sucrose content ranged from 2.3 to 4.5% [28]. In the present study, the mean sucrose content of the 6 non-conforming samples was 14.1%, with a range of 5.1 to 33.4%. This high amount of sucrose could have been due to overfeeding the bees with sugar in spring [37] or to the early harvesting of honey before the full transformation of sugar into glucose and fructose [38]. The high sucrose content could be also an indication of possible adulteration by the direct addition of sugar to honey [39].
