Spread on toast or drizzled over natural yogurt, honey is one of nature’s finest foods. Known to help people recover from sore throats and other illnesses, it’s what you might call a “superfood”. Here we find out how it’s made, why it's similar to wine and other buzz-worthy facts.

Though we get many useful products from insects such as silk, red dye and shellac glaze – and in some cultures beetles, bees, ants and crickets are eaten – honey is the only natural product insects make that humans consume.

Honey bees don’t make honey out of nothing. It starts as nectar extracted from flowers using bees’ long tube-shaped tongues and is stored in their second stomach (known as its crop) as they fly around. Here it mixes with enzymes which change its composition and make it more suitable for long-term storage.

When honey bees arrive back at the hive, they pass nectar to house bees by regurgitating it. House bees repeat the digestion process, before storing it in their honeycomb. At this stage, it’s not syrupy like shop-bought honey. The bees have to fan it with their wings to make the excess liquid evaporate. Once ready, it’s sealed over with wax and saved for winter when food is scarce.

Beekeepers only take honey that bees do not need. A hive needs nine to 14kg (20 to 30lbs) of honey to survive winter but can produce triple this. Plus, beekeepers can feed bees sugar syrup to make up for the loss.

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28g (1oz) of honey (the amount in one of those individual size pots you’re given at cafés and restaurants) would provide a bee with enough energy to fuel a flight around the globe.

Despite bees’ ability to produce a massive amount of honey as a hive, they produce a surprisingly small quantity as individuals. One bee will only make a 12th of a teaspoon of honey in its entire life.

To be able to fill a 500g (1lb) pot of honey would require 550 bees and the nectar of two million flowers. Luckily, one colony of bees contains between 20,000 and 60,000 of the ingenious insects.

The pots of clear, golden pasteurised syrup you find in the supermarket are only one form of honey. You can also get comb honey (which is still sealed inside the bees’ wax comb), raw honey (which is unprocessed, contains pollen and wax, and is susceptible to crystallising), and granulated honey (powdery, dehydrated honey).

Have you noticed how honeys come in different shades? The colour of honey depends on the type of flowers bees visit. Minerals such as calcium, magnesium and iron in the nectar give it its colour. In the US there are at least 300 different types of honey, for example avocado, eucalyptus, orange blossom and clover.

The general rule is clear and light honey is mild tasting and dark honey is bold tasting. It has also been found that darker honeys have more antioxidants than light honeys.

If a bee visits one type of flower, you get mono-floral honey which is the most prized and expensive, for example manuka honey. If bees’ nectar source is varied, multi-floral honey is produced. However, sometimes producers choose to blend honey, particularly honey supplied in bulk, to make it more consistent.

It won’t get you drunk, but it’s similar to wine in that it has vintages. The vintage signifies the year it was made, what flowers were in the field that year and what the weather was like. Year on year, no two vintages of honey are the same.

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It may come as a surprise to find out most of the world’s honey comes from China. It produces far more than other countries, making 444 million kg (444 thousand metric tons) in 2019. In comparison, Turkey, in second place, produced a quarter of that.

We regularly hear about counterfeit handbags and pirated movies, but less frequently of fake honey. It’s estimated a third of honey has been modified, for example flavoured, darkened, diluted and wrongly labelled. There’s far more honey in circulation than it’s physically possible for the world’s bees to have produced.

The prized condiment costs a small fortune but what goes into manuka honey? Real manuka honey is made by bees that pollinate manuka bushes in New Zealand and Australia. It’s a chemical in the flower’s nectar that gives it its miracle bacteria-destroying properties.

Mead, the alcoholic drink of choice of the Greeks, Romans and Vikings, is produced by adding yeast to honey-water and allowing it to ferment for several weeks. Mead can be sweet, dry or flavoured with fruit. It’s also coming back into fashion.

The earliest evidence for humans eating honey dates back 9,000 years to the Stone Age. At the time the world was coming out of an Ice Age and agriculture was just beginning. Ancient pottery from Europe, the Near East and North Africa has been found with traces of beeswax showing the first farmers were beekeepers.

Due to its lack of water, acidity and hydrogen peroxide, honey can last for thousands of years and never go bad – bacteria cannot survive in it. When archaeologists were excavating Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun's tomb, a 2,000-year-old jar of ready-to-eat honey was found.

The Romans loved honey. They were avid beekeepers and responsible for bringing the species to the UK. They used honey in cooking and dressed wounds with it to prevent infection. It’s even reported they used honey to pay tax.

Due to its antibacterial properties, honey has been used in medicine for centuries. Ancient records show it was a favoured treatment for wounds. The sticky substance creates a barrier on the skin preventing moisture and dirt from getting in and causing infection.

Not only can honey be used to treat grazes and sore throats, it can help people with allergies. Just like a vaccine, the small quantities of pollen in raw honey build up immunity without being enough to cause a full blown reaction. So come summer when pollen is in the air, hay fever sufferers are more ready to tackle it.

Though it’s not entirely proven, there have been a number of studies which show honey can play a role in improving brain function. Raw honey has been lauded for its antidepressant and memory-enhancing effects. It also has antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties that help the brain.

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Though it’s very unlikely, honey should not be given to children under the age of one as it can cause a rare but serious illness called infant botulism. Botulism is a bacteria that lies dormant in dust and soil and occasionally gets into honey. Because babies’ intestines are young and undeveloped, it’s more difficult for them to combat it.

Humans aren’t the only species attracted to the sweet, fragrant taste of honey. Bears are famous for attacking hives and enduring stings to eat bees which are high in protein and their honey. Other mammals including skunks, opossums, honey badgers, raccoons and monkeys can’t get enough of the stuff.

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Honeypot ants are insects found in North America and Australia, which instead of building a hive, store honey in their stomachs. They can grow as large as grapes and are edible and eaten by tribes. Meanwhile, the Mexican honey wasp stores honey in trees which is enjoyed by indigenous people.

Around the world bees are dying and if they become extinct, honey isn’t the only thing we’ll lose. Fruit such as carrots, apples and melons, veg such as onions, and nuts will disappear too – a third of our food relies on bees for pollination. It’s probable humans will also be at risk. Albert Einstein famously said “if bees disappeared off the face of the Earth, man would only have four years left to live."

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