Leave a bottle of honey in your cupboard for years, and it may eventually crystallize, but it won't spoil. Microbes that cause food spoilage don't find honey to be accommodating, and that's because it has a low water content plus antimicrobial properties contributed by honeybees themselves. While honey is more than sugar, it is, overwhelmingly, sugar from the nectar of flowers.
“Honey is hygroscopic, it draws water out of the air,” says Lewis Bartlett, a postdoctoral associate at the University of Georgia who studies honey bee diseases and evolution. “If that happens, eventually the water level will rise to a point where yeast starts growing, which makes [the honey] ferment and go rancid.” The natural process by which honey bees produce honey drastically reduces its water content, he says, to the point that nothing (not even yeast) can survive long enough within it to go rancid. As long as your honey is sitting sealed on a shelf, it can stay good forever — which explains how scientists have found honey in dry Egyptian tombs that is still good to eat!
The task of removing water from nectar is complicated, but bees are also experts at adding preservatives and facilitating clean storage. Read about the honeybee's process of turning flower juice into a miracle food at Discover magazine. -via Damn Interesting
(Image credit: TheCulinaryGeek)
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