What is honey made from?

Nectar, which is mostly water with some sugar in it. Bees drink it, carry it home in a separate stomach, pass it mouth to mouth between workers - which adds enzymes that split the complex sugars - and then fan it with their wings until enough water has evaporated. Nectar is around 70 per cent water; honey is under 20.

That reduction is the whole trick. Honey is so concentrated that it pulls water out of any bacterium or fungus that lands in it, and the bees' enzymes also generate a trace of hydrogen peroxide. Between them it is effectively sterile, and sealed jars recovered from Egyptian tombs have been found unspoiled after three thousand years. It has been used as a wound dressing since antiquity, and medical-grade honey is back in hospitals for exactly that reason.

The quantities involved are quietly absurd. A worker bee produces about a twelfth of a teaspoon of honey in her entire life, and a jar represents something like two million flower visits and a distance flown roughly equivalent to going twice round the Earth.