Honey

Honey before and during early beekeeping

The oldest use of honey cannot be assigned to one place from this evidence. The Metropolitan Museum’s catalogue describes an Egyptian storage jar fragment whose hieratic label identifies honey; the object is dated to about 1386–1347 BCE. It shows honey stored as a named food in Egypt, not the beginning of honey use.

At Tel Rehov in the Jordan Valley, researchers identified bees’ remains inside clay cylinders as evidence of an apiary operating in the 10th to early 9th centuries BCE. The authors interpret the remains as evidence for an established beekeeping practice and discuss the possibility that bees were moved from Anatolia. That regional finding does not establish a single route or birthplace for beekeeping.

People also gathered honey from wild nests, but this record does not date the first gathering or settle where it began. The account therefore distinguishes the dated Egyptian honey label and Tel Rehov hives from any global origin story.

A food made by bees from other plants’ sugar

Bees collect sugary material from plants, either nectar from flowers or honeydew associated with sap-feeding insects. They process and concentrate it, then store it in comb as it ripens. Codex uses this process to define honey and recognises both floral and honeydew sources. Other bee species also store honey-like foods, but the standard's definition is specific to honey bees.

Honey varies a great deal. The standard describes colour that runs from nearly colourless to dark brown, a consistency that can be fluid, viscous or partly to entirely crystallised, and flavour and aroma that come from the plants the bees worked. Honey from nectar is called blossom or nectar honey; honey that comes mainly from the excretions of sap-sucking insects, order Hemiptera, is honeydew honey. The two behave differently in the jar and on the plate, and the differences are covered below.

In a fermenting kitchen, honey supplies sugar that yeast can use. Concentrated honey behaves differently from dough or other wet mixtures, so its keeping properties do not carry over automatically when it is diluted.

Honey in atlas breads

Honey takes different roles across bread formulas. In Marcus Samuelsson’s 2009 Epicurious recipe, titled “Honey Bread” and introduced as Ethiopian dabo, honey is kneaded into a yeast dough. That page documents one modern author’s formula; it is not a historical recipe or a definition of every dabo.

A Moroccan baghrir recipe published by Infos Tourisme Maroc serves the cooked semolina pancakes with a mixture of honey and butter. Here honey is a topping and dip, rather than a sweetener mixed into the batter. The atlas also records honey as an accompaniment to other griddle breads, but these two recipes are the uses directly documented in the sources listed here.

In bread, honey contributes dissolved sugars, moisture and its own flavour. In a yeast dough it can supply fermentable sugar, while in a syrup it remains a finishing ingredient. The source recipes do not establish a universal substitution ratio for replacing sugar or other sweeteners.

How nectar becomes honey

Nectar is 70 to 80 percent water, and honeydew is wetter still, about 89 percent. A forager carries nectar in a honey stomach that holds about 40 milligrams in the western honey bee, Apis mellifera. Enzymes from the bee’s salivary and hypopharyngeal glands start splitting sucrose, the sugar plants make, into glucose and fructose, the two simple sugars that make up most of honey.

In the hive the nectar is passed from bee to bee, regurgitated and swallowed again, and spread in thin films while the bees fan it with their wings. Water evaporates until the honey holds roughly 15.5 to 18 percent, and the bees then seal each cell with a wax cap. The air in the honey-storing part of the hive sits around 35 °C, which the colony holds with body heat and evaporative cooling. The cap protects the ripened honey from dampness and from contamination.

Another enzyme, glucose oxidase, turns some glucose into gluconic acid and hydrogen peroxide. The acid is the largest of honey’s many organic acids, and together the two products add to honey’s acidity and to the way it holds back bacteria. An average hive produces about 29 kilograms a year.

What is in the jar

Honey is mostly two sugars. Fructose makes up about 51 percent of the sugar and glucose about 44 percent, while galactose, maltose and sucrose each contribute 3 percent or less. By weight, 100 grams of honey holds about 82 grams of carbohydrate and 17 grams of water, with almost no fat, 0.3 grams of protein and 300 kilocalories. Its sweetness is roughly that of sucrose, and its density is 1.38 to 1.45 kilograms per litre at 20 °C.

Honey is acidic. The average pH is 3.9, with a range from 3.4 to 6.1, and organic acids make up 0.17 to 1.17 percent of the weight. Gluconic acid dominates; formic, acetic, citric, lactic, malic and succinic acids are among the others.

The Codex standard sets sale requirements: moisture, sugar and insoluble-solids limits vary by honey type. It forbids additions and removal of honey’s pollen except to remove foreign matter; honey that has begun to ferment or effervesce does not meet the standard.

An optional Codex annex sets criteria for acidity, diastase activity, hydroxymethylfurfural and electrical conductivity. Diastase can fall with heat exposure, while hydroxymethylfurfural can rise. Conductivity distinguishes many blossom honeys from honeydew and chestnut types. These are quality and classification tests, not home-fermentation instructions or safety tests.

Why honey keeps, and how it spoils

Honey resists microbial growth because little of its water is available. Water activity measures water available to microbes; dissolved sugars keep it low. The study on honey water activity reports a limiting range around 0.61–0.62 for osmotolerant yeasts. Honey is not sterile: yeasts can occur naturally, but growth depends on the conditions.

Fermentation risk rises when moisture, viable osmotolerant yeasts, crystallisation and storage temperature align. A beekeeping-laboratory paper summarizes USDA handbook observations about moisture and storage time. Those measurements describe the referenced study conditions and do not establish one moisture limit for every jar or a universal home-storage guarantee.

When glucose crystallises, water redistributes into the liquid between crystals. That phase can have more moisture than the original honey, changing its fermentation risk.

Yeasts can produce carbon dioxide and ethanol from honey sugars; in oxygen, ethanol may be converted to acetic acid. Gas can pressurise sealed containers and flavours change. Producers manage quality by checking moisture, keeping containers clean and controlling moisture before storage. Treatment instructions depend on the product and can affect heat-sensitive compounds.

Honey absorbs moisture from air, so keep it sealed. Processing for retail storage is product-specific.

Crystallisation and texture

Honey is a supersaturated sugar solution: it holds more glucose than water can dissolve at room temperature, and with time glucose precipitates as small crystals. Crystallised honey melts at about 40 to 50 °C. Crystals form fastest between 13 and 17 °C, and seed crystals form best at 5 to 8 °C, while below about 5 °C honey does not crystallise at all.

The proportion of glucose to fructose decides how quickly it happens. Honey with much glucose, such as honey from brassicas, granulates quickly; chestnut and tupelo honeys, which are low in glucose, largely do not. The Codex standard treats a fluid, viscous or crystallised consistency as ordinary. What crystallisation does change is the water content of the liquid that remains between the crystals, as the section on spoilage describes.

Honey as a fermentable sugar

Mead is made by fermenting honey with water. Honey supplies most of its fermentable sugar, though fruit, grain, herbs or spices may be added. Styles vary in sweetness, strength and carbonation, and written names do not always imply one fixed recipe.

Traditional mead fermentations could rely on yeasts and bacteria carried by honey or fruit. Modern makers may use selected yeasts and nutrients, but honey composition and microbial cultures differ; fermentation time and outcome therefore vary. A documented process is evidence for that batch, not a universal schedule.

Mead relatives use different additions or treatments: metheglin includes herbs or spices; melomel includes fruit, with cyser for apple and pyment for grape; braggot includes malt; bochet uses heated honey. Tej is a honey drink flavoured with gesho. These names describe varied traditions and formulations.

Concentrated honey resists fermentation; dilution changes water activity and can let yeasts use its sugars. Fermented honey is distinct from honey that has spoiled in storage.

Honey also appears alongside other fermentable ingredients. Chemical analysis of Jiahu vessel residues led researchers to interpret a seventh-millennium BCE beverage made from rice, honey and hawthorn and/or grape; the analysis does not recover a recipe. Archaeological, biomolecular and plant evidence from Nordic sites supports a mixed drink in which honey, local fruit and cereal were fermented together, sometimes with imported grape wine; this is a reconstruction, not a standard formula. In southwestern Uganda, a primary study describes Enturire as a sorghum-and-honey beverage: its traditional sequence ferments a sorghum malt slurry before adding honey, while the study also tests a modified order and selected starter cultures. These examples show honey acting as one substrate among several, rather than defining every drink as mead.

Types, grades and where honey comes from

Beekeepers and buyers sort honey by what the bees worked. Monofloral honey comes mainly from one kind of flower; clover, orange blossom and manuka are examples, and manuka is darker, earthy and slightly bitter. Polyfloral or wildflower honey comes from many plants, and its taste varies from year to year. Honeydew honey is stronger and less sweet than blossom honey. Pine honey makes up 60 to 65 percent of Greek honey production.

Under Codex rules, a floral name such as clover or lavender may be used only if the honey comes wholly or mainly from that plant and has the matching properties, and a place name only if the honey was produced entirely within that area; the country of production must be declared as well. Honey may also be labelled by how it left the comb: extracted by centrifuge from decapped broodless combs, pressed from broodless combs, or drained. Styles are liquid or crystalline honey, comb honey sold in sealed combs and chunk honey containing pieces of comb. Honey filtered so that pollen is significantly removed must be labelled filtered honey.

Grading is a separate matter. In the United States, voluntary grades depend on soluble solids, flavour and aroma, defects and clarity. Grades A and B need at least 81.4 percent soluble solids, which means no more than 18.6 percent water, and Grade C at least 80.0 percent. Colour is graded on the Pfund scale, from 0 for water white to more than 114 for dark amber.

In 2023 the world produced about 1.89 million tonnes of honey. China made 463,500 tonnes, about a quarter, followed by Turkey with 114,886, Ethiopia with 84,591, Iran with 80,389, Argentina with 73,395 and the United States with 62,855.

Buying and handling, and who should not eat it

Honey is sometimes adulterated with other sugars and syrups, added to change flavour or viscosity, cut cost or prevent crystallisation. Corn syrup is now the most common adulterant and is hard to detect; isotope-ratio mass spectrometry can detect added cane sugar or corn syrup at about 7 percent. The Codex standard prohibits adulteration of anything sold as honey. For the cook, the practical points are to buy from a source that states its origin, to expect real honey to crystallise in time and to store it tightly closed away from damp.

Honey should not be given to infants. The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention state that honey can contain the bacteria that cause botulism, and advise not feeding honey to a child younger than one year and not giving honey or products made with it to infants, including honey pacifiers; several babies in Texas became ill with infant botulism after using honey pacifiers. The risk is small, and honey is considered safe after the first birthday.

On the glycaemic index, honey varies; the estimated range is 31 to 78, depending on the variety. The Jain tradition prohibits eating honey.

Open points

Dates assigned to the Araña honey-collecting painting vary, and the earliest mead evidence remains disputed. Honey fermentation also depends on yeast load, moisture and temperature; no single figure predicts how every jar will behave.