Honey is one of nature’s most versatile and wholesome foods, crafted exclusively by honeybees from nectar gathered from flowering plants. Every drop of pure honey is a testament to the tireless work of honeybees, who collectively travel thousands of miles and visit millions of flowers to produce this golden treasure.

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A strong hive of 40,000 or more bees can produce an annual surplus of 80 pounds of honey under ideal conditions. While some years yield modest amounts, other seasons can produce as much as 150–200 pounds.

The unique properties of raw honey—its flavor, color, and texture—are determined by the nectar it originates from. Neither the bees nor the honey processor alters these natural characteristics.

• Dark Honey: Rich, robust flavor with a bold profile.
• Light Honey: Milder, more delicate taste.

The bees invert the sugar in the nectar and dry it to a perfect consistency that prevents fermentation, ensuring a long shelf life.

Honey bees are essential to maintaining biodiversity, ensuring the reproduction of plants, and supporting agricultural systems in the United States and internationally. Sure, we could survive without these bees, but our diet would be pretty bland. Honey bees’ pollination is responsible for over 35% of the foods we eat, including apples, cashews, cucumbers, peaches, watermelon, and many more of our favorite produce.

As bees move from flower to flower in search of food, they inadvertently transfer pollen between the flowers. This transfer ensures the reproduction of many of these plants, which, in turn, promotes a diverse ecosystem. Honey bees aren’t the only pollinators that lead to reproduction, but they have several unique traits that allow them to be especially effective at their job. Their bodies, equipped with hair and “pollen baskets” on their legs, allow them to easily collect and transfer pollen. They can also be moved in large numbers from crop to crop or plant to plant by trained beekeepers. These large groups allow for increased biodiversity and the best “bang for your buck” for farmers. In addition, honey bees tend to forage on and pollinate many types of crops, flowers, and plants, allowing them to be versatile pollinators for many different ecosystems.

The Health Benefits of Honey and Its Nutritional Value

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Honey is a natural ingredient used for its sweetness, energy and potential health benefits. It is mainly used for human consumption (but also in some cosmetics) either as pure honey or as an ingredient in other food products such as desserts, cereals and juices. There are hundreds of different honey types such as clover, acacia or manuka, depending on the botanical origin. This article explores how honey is made, describes its composition, and discusses research on its reported health effects.

How is honey made?

The journey from bee to bottle begins with flower nectar. Honeybees collect the nectar and enzymes in bee saliva break down the sugar into glucose and fructose which is stored in honeycombs to feed the hive over the winter. In the honeycomb, excess water evaporates through constant fanning from the bee’s wings. The resulting thick, sticky liquid is what we know as honey (see Table 1 for composition). 1

The European Union’s largest honey yields are found in Spain, Germany, Romania and Hungary. 2 However, as successful honey production depends on the honeybee thriving, it is of concern that Europe is seeing a significant decline in bee colonies (21% in the winter / alone). 3

The importance of bees

Honeybees not only produce honey but undertake an important role as crop pollinators. Given that 84% of the EU’s crops depend on pollination, the European Commission developed a strategy for honeybee health. 4 Multiple factors contribute to the decline in bees; one of which may be pesticides, which prompted the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) to issue guidance on assessing the potential risks of pesticides to bees and more recently work towards the development of a database to actively collect information on bee health in Europe. 4, 5

The different types of honey

There are over 300 different types of honey worldwide.1 They differ in colour, aroma and flavour depending on the plant source where bees collect nectar. Some of the most well-known types of honey are manuka and acacia honey. 1

Honey can be broadly categorised into raw and processed honey. 1 When honey gets extracted from the beehive, it usually gets strained to remove wax and other non-honey particles. It is then available in its raw honey form which can be further heated and bottled to be available as processed honey, the form which is most commonly available in supermarkets. The heating and bottling process removes potential pathogens, but also the vitamins and antioxidants present in raw honey.

The nutritional composition of honey

Season, environmental conditions, processing techniques and varieties of flower nectar can all influence the composition of honey but, essentially, the main nutritional constituents are carbohydrates (simple sugars: fructose and glucose – find more information in our ‘Carbohydrates and its functions’ article). In addition to water, honey contains very small amounts of protein, vitamins, minerals, trace elements, enzymes and polyphenols, including flavonoids from pollen, which can help identify the honey origin. 6 The compositional criteria for honey are regulated by the European Council Directive /110/EC of 20th December and specifies that the maximum water content of honey must be 20% for it to be an authentic food product (see also Table 1).

Table 1. Nutritional composition of honey* 8

Per 100 g

Per 20 g serving

Energy

288 kcal/ kJ

58 kcal/246 kJ

Fat (g)

0

0

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Additional reading:
The Benefits of Using Water Based PVC Glue

Carbohydrate (g)

76.4

15.3

- fructose (g)

41.8

8.4

- glucose (g)

34.6

6.9

Protein (g)

0.4

0.08

Other constituents

Water (g)

17.5

3.5

*based on analysis of 8 samples of assorted types.

Honey is typically a smooth liquid containing imperceptible tiny crystals. However, factors such as its origin, low storage temperature, longer storage time and higher glucose content, can all lead to crystallisation; larger crystals form and the texture becomes crunchy. The process can be momentarily reversed by gentle heating. However, heating and filtering of honey (to purify) may negatively affect its properties by for example darkening the colour, destroying enzymes, and removing health-beneficial antioxidants.

Health benefits: is honey good for you?

Honey has been used for millennia in traditional medicine for its potential antibacterial, anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties. Honey specifically prepared for medical use can be applied topically for wound dressings. Honey’s low moisture content, hydrogen peroxide, and acidity (average pH of 3.9) are inhospitable to bacteria and give honey its antibacterial properties. 9 The anti-inflammatory properties are thought to be due to antioxidant substances, 8 although the amounts in individual honey samples differ depending on honey origin, composition and dose. 6 Some evidence from individual and small-scale cell, animal and human studies also suggest that honey may be beneficial in the treatment of coughs, belly and digestive upsets. 9 Finally, honey may contain spores of the bacteria Clostridium botulinum, which can cause serious infection in infants, leading to advice to avoid giving honey to children below 12 months of age. 10 

Despite a large number of studies on honey, most of these are not conducted in humans. Those studies investigating health beneficial effects of honey in humans, are small scale studies on preventing different diseases with different types of honey (see our Infographic on the ‘Hierarchy of scientific evidence’). Overall, the evidence that honey has specific health effects in humans is limited and not conclusive, with large-scale studies in humans lacking evidence to support current claims about its health promoting properties.

Honey versus sugar

Unlike sugar, honey contains vitamins, minerals and antioxidants; hence, it is easy to think that there are health benefits to honey compared to sugar. However, vitamins and minerals in honey are present in less than 1% of the recommended daily intake amount. To receive the health benefits from the low amount of vitamins and minerals present in honey, large quantities of honey would need to be eaten. Such quantities would exceed the recommended daily sugar intake by the World Health Organisation. 12 Hence, a spoonful of honey will contribute to your energy metabolism due to its sugar content (without exceeding the recommended daily intake of sugar) yet is unlikely to have additional beneficial effects.

Finally, it can be argued that raw honey is better than processed honey, yet as the vitamin, mineral and antioxidant content in honey is minimal (per recommended portion size) the health benefits from eating raw honey over processed honey are likely minimal.

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