As far as the human race goes, we find ourselves in a world of convenience. With years of technological evolution, the advent of junk food and sugar substitutes, it might be difficult to appreciate the value and history behind honey. Since the beginning of recorded history, humans have traded with it, bathed in it, healed and fixed wounds with it, and of course, most importantly, eaten it. Mentioned in the ancient scrolls of the Old Testament, the Koran and across religious texts of the East, honey has held a sucrose-induced power over the human race, and the sticky stuff has, in many ways, held cultures together in its almost universal appeal on our palates.
Honey of course, starts with the honey bee, although different forms of honey are made by a variety of insects with a wide category of flavors and distinctly different properties. Honey-storing "social " bees came to be during the Miocene era, about 20-10 million years ago, making nests wherever they could find them; in holes in the ground, trees and rock formations. Honey serves as a primary food source for the bees. The Honeybee collects the nectar of flowers and transforms it into honey through regurgitation and stores the sweet substance in the wax honeycombs inside the beehive. The monosaccharide from the fructose and glucose of flower nectar is where honey gets is sweetness, and is at about the same as granulated sugar. Honey has an incredibly low water level of about 0.6, which makes the growth of microorganisms nearly impossible. The only danger the consumption of honey holds is for infants, whose immature intestinal tracts cannot protect the body from potentially toxic endospores within the nectar that the honey was created from 1.
Man's craving for honey began in Hunter-Gatherer society. Humans' need for carbohydrates and fat were crucial to survival, and the almost ethereally sweet taste of honey was almost impossible to find anywhere else.
