Honey: What Actually Is It?

Jem the beekeeper
Feb 7
9 min read

I'm writing this post because I've had a few conversations recently with customers, makers, and bee enthusiasts who want to know more about what honey actually is. Not just it's sweet and bees make it but what it's made of, how it's defined legally, and why it behaves the way it does.

There's a fair bit of confusion out there. Some people think honey is just sugar and sadly due to the adulteration that takes place to honeys in supermarket type environments, those people are not all wrong. Other people assume all honey is the same. And quite a few are surprised to learn there's actual UK law defining what can and can't be called honey.

So I figured I try and help clear things up.

The Legal Definition

In the UK, honey has a proper legal definition set out in The Honey (England) Regulations 2015. If you're selling honey, this matters. If you're buying it, this protects you.

According to the law, honey is

"the natural sweet substance produced by Apis mellifera bees from the nectar of plants or from secretions of living parts of plants or excretions of plant-sucking insects on the living parts of plants which the bees collect, transform by combining with specific substances of their own, deposit, dehydrate, store and leave in honeycombs to ripen and mature."

Yes, it's quite a mouthful. But the important bits are this: honey must come from honeybees (Apis mellifera specifically), it must be made from nectar or honeydew, and the bees must transform it themselves. You can't add anything to it and still call it honey. No sugar. No water. No flavourings. Nothing. If someone's added something, it's not honey anymore. It might be a honey-based product, but it's not honey.

small jars of honey and a pile of recently prepared jar labels — Compliant labelling is reassuring for both beekeeper and customer!

What About Flavoured Honey or Honey Infusions?

Good question - there are now lots of honey infusions in the general marketplace. So, if you buy honey with lavender, chilli, garlic, or anything else added to it, is that still honey?

Legally, no. It's a honey-based product.

You can absolutely sell honey with things added to it. There's no law against it. But you can't label it as just "honey." You'd need to call it something like "honey with lavender" or "chilli-infused honey" to make it clear that it's not pure honey.

And you definitely can't call it "lavender honey" unless the bees actually foraged on lavender. "Lavender honey" implies floral origin, which is a protected term under the regulations. If you're adding lavender after the fact, that's a different product entirely.

This matters because it protects both consumers and beekeepers. If I've gone to the trouble of producing actual heather honey or lime honey (by moving my bees to specific locations where specific forage is unquestionably dominant), it's not great to have someone else then selling lavender-infused supermarket honey as "lavender honey" and undercutting me and other beekeepers who have gone to the effort to produce and share the authentic product with people.

So, What's Actually In Honey?

Honey is mostly sugar and water. But it's not just sugar and water. This is the bit that isn't common knowledge.

A typical UK honey breaks down roughly like this:

Around 80% carbohydrates (sugars), 17 to 18% water, and the remaining 2 to 3% is made up of other substances including acids, enzymes, minerals, amino acids, vitamins, pollen, and tiny amounts of other compounds that give honey its flavour and aroma.

The sugars are mainly fructose and glucose. In most blossom honeys, fructose and glucose together make up at least 60% of the total weight. The ratio between them varies depending on the flowers the bees visited, but it's usually around 6 parts fructose to 5 parts glucose.

There's also a small amount of sucrose (usually 1 to 3%), a bit of maltose, and traces of more complex sugars.

A super frame of capped honey — A National Super frame with honey cells that are full, and have been capped by the bees. Look at those white beeswax cappings! The honey is perfect.

Why The Sugar Mix Matters

The balance of fructose to glucose isn't just a chemistry detail. It actually affects how honey behaves.

Fructose is sweeter than glucose and more soluble in water. Glucose is less sweet and crystallises more easily. So honey with a higher glucose content (like oil seed rape honey) will set solid faster. Honey with more fructose (like acacia honey) stays runny longer.

This is why some honeys granulate within weeks and others stay liquid for months. It's not a sign of quality or purity. It's just the sugar profile doing what it does.

Water content matters too. UK regulations say blossom honey can't have more than 20% water. Heather honey (Calluna) is allowed up to 23% because of its thixotropic properties, which means it's naturally thicker and gel-like.

If honey has too much water, it's more likely to ferment. Below 17%, fermentation won't happen. Between 17 and 19%, it depends on how much yeast is present and how it's stored. Above 19%, fermentation becomes a real risk.

That said, fermented honey (if you end up with some) doesn't have to be wasted. It can be fed back to the colony of bees it came from, used in baking, or even turned into mead. It's not suitable for jarring and selling, but it's not ruined either. No wastage.

Here is a comparison between runny honey and crystallized honey. See how the crystallised honey has obvious sugar crystals and is much more granular in texture.

The Other Stuff

The 2 to 3% that isn't sugar or water is where honey gets interesting.

Acids, mainly gluconic acid, give honey its slightly acidic pH of around 3.9. This acidity helps prevent bacterial growth and contributes to honey's long shelf life.

Enzymes are added by the bees themselves. The main ones are invertase (which breaks sucrose down into glucose and fructose), glucose oxidase (which produces hydrogen peroxide and gluconic acid), and diastase (which breaks down starches).

These enzymes are delicate. Heat destroys them. That's why overheating honey during processing is a problem. The law specifically says honey must not

"have been heated in such a way that the natural enzymes have been either destroyed or significantly inactivated."

There's a legal test for this: diastase activity. UK honey must have a diastase activity of at least 8 on the Schade scale (or at least 3 for low-enzyme honeys like citrus, provided the HMF content is low enough).

HMF, or hydroxymethylfurfural (I couldn't say it neatly on the first attempt either!), is a breakdown product that forms when sugars are heated or when honey ages. Fresh, properly handled honey has very little. The legal limit is 40 mg/kg. Go over that and the honey's been overheated or stored badly.

Viscosity

Honey is thick. Everyone knows that. But how thick varies a lot.

Viscosity depends on water content, temperature, and the floral source. More water means runnier honey. Warmer honey flows more easily. And some honeys, like heather, are naturally much thicker than others because of their protein content.

At room temperature, typical honey has a viscosity of around 70 to 100 poise (a unit of measurement for how resistant a fluid is to flow). For comparison, water is about 0.01 poise. Golden syrup is around 100 poise. So honey sits somewhere between very thick and extremely thick.

Warm it up to 35°C and it becomes much more manageable. This is the temperature I use when I'm working with crystallised honey that needs to be stirred or poured. It's warm enough to make the honey workable but not so hot that it damages the enzymes.

Hygroscopic Nature

Honey absorbs moisture from the air. This is called hygroscopicity, and it's one of honey's more inconvenient properties.

If you leave honey uncapped in a humid environment (above 60% relative humidity), it will slowly absorb water from the air. The water content rises. And once it's above 19%, fermentation becomes a real risk.

This is why I always store honey in sealed containers. And why, during extraction, I work quickly and don't leave settling tanks or buckets open longer than necessary.

The flip side is that honey's hygroscopic nature makes it useful in baking. It keeps cakes moist. But that's a side benefit. For storage, it can be a right headache at times, especially if you live in a damp prone Grade II listed property with stone walls and questionable ventilation! I say this with feeling. If your extraction room tends toward the humid side, you'll find yourself working faster, sealing things tighter, and muttering about relative humidity more than you ever thought you would. But like anything it's manageable with effort and diligence.

Colour, Flavour, and Aroma

The regulations say honey can range from "nearly colourless to dark brown." This is accurate. I've jarred some honey that's so pale it looks almost white, and I've seen some of my honey (usually the Autumn honey) that's very dark brown, almost black.

Colour actually doesn't tell you much about the quality though. It's mostly about floral source and, to some extent, mineral content.

Flavour and aroma are where honey really varies. The law says these "vary but are derived from the plant origin." Every beekeeper knows this. Oil seed rape honey tastes nothing like heather honey. Lime honey has a completely different character to bramble.

The compounds responsible for flavour and aroma are present in tiny amounts, but they're what make honey interesting. These include things like alcohols, aldehydes, ketones, acids, and esters. What!?

I know! That sounds more like a chemistry lab than a jar of honey. But these are naturally occurring organic compounds, not additives. They're part of what the bees collect from the flowers and what forms as the honey matures. And they're volatile, which means they evaporate easily.

This is why honey loses some of its aroma over time, especially if it's been heated or stored badly. Those delicate compounds simply disappear into the air.

The left photo shows jars of pale Spring honey which I harvested back in 2020. The jar on the right has honey in it which has been harvested at a similar time of year, but in 2025. It looks far more orange.

What Can't Be In It

The regulations are clear: no food ingredients can be added. No additives. Nothing except other honey.

Honey must also be "as far as possible, free from organic or inorganic matters foreign to its composition." That means no bits of bee, no wax, no wood, no dust. Straining and settling take care of most of this, but it's a legal requirement, not just good practice.

Pollen is allowed, and in fact it's expected. But you can't deliberately remove it unless you're making filtered honey, which is a specific product with its own legal definition. Removing pollen to disguise the origin of honey is not allowed.

Why This Matters

I know this all sounds a bit technical. But it matters for a few reasons, and if you're here reading this, it's likely that you care and are curious. You should bee.

First, if you're buying honey, these rules are designed to protect you. They mean that when you buy a jar labelled "honey," you're getting honey. Not a honey-flavoured syrup. Not honey with added water. Just honey. This matters more than you might think. Honey fraud is a real and growing problem. Adulteration with corn syrup, rice syrup, and sugar syrups is widespread, particularly in cheaper imported honey. The regulations exist to combat this, but enforcement is patchy. I'll write more about honey fraud and adulteration in a separate post, but for now, know that buying from a trusted source matters. Local = good!

Second, if you're a beekeeper selling honey, you need to know this. The regulations aren't optional. They're law. And they exist to maintain standards and protect both consumers and responsible beekeepers.

Third, understanding what honey actually is helps you appreciate it. It's not just sweet stuff in a jar. It's a complex natural product with specific properties that come from how bees make it and what flowers they visit.

Final Thoughts

Honey is essentially different sugars, predominantly fructose and glucose, with water, enzymes, acids, minerals, and trace compounds that give it character.

The law defines it. Chemistry explains it. And bees make it by doing what they've done for millions of years.

If you've read this far, thank you! I know this one is longer than some of my other posts, but I wanted to give a proper answer to the question "what actually is honey?" without either oversimplifying or getting too academic.

If you have specific questions, feel free to get in touch. And if you're curious about other bee materials such as propolis and beeswax, have a look at my other blog posts.