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Similar to honey, and usually bottled and sold as honey is honeydew, which is made from the sweet secretions of aphids, scale, or other plant sap sucking insects. Honeydew from pine forests has a "piney" taste and is prized for medicinal use in Europe and Turkey.

A side-effect of bees collecting nectar and pollen to make honey is pollinationPollination is an important step in the reproduction of seed plants: the transfer of pollen grains (male gametes) to the plant carpel, the structure that contains the ovule (female gamete). The receptive part of the carpel is called a stigma in the flower, which is crucial for flowering plantMagnoliopsida Dicots Liliopsida Monocots The flowering plants (also angiosperms or Magnoliophyta are one of the major groups of modern plants, comprising those that produce seeds in specialized reproductive organs called flowers, where the ovulary or carps.

The main uses of honey are in cookingCooking is the act of preparing food for consumption. It encompasses a vast range of methods, tools and combinations of ingredients to improve the flavour and/or digestibility of food. It generally requires the selection, measurement and combining of ingr, baking, spreading on bread or toast, and adding to various beverages such as teaThis article is about the beverage. For alternative meanings, see tea (disambiguation). Tang Dynasty ( 618- 907). Tea is a caffeinated beverage, an infusion made by steeping the dried leaves or buds of the shrub Camellia sinensis in hot water. In addition. Because honey is hygroscopic (drawing moisture from the air), a small quantity of honey added to a pastry recipe will retard it from becoming stale. Raw honey also contains enzymeAn enzyme is a protein, or protein complex, that catalyzes a chemical reaction. Like any catalyst, enzymes work by lowering the activation energy of a reaction, thus allowing the reaction to proceed to its steady state or completion much faster than it ots that help in its digestionDigestion is the process whereby a biological entity processes a substance, in order to chemically convert the substance into nutrients. Digestion occurs at the multicellular, cellular, and sub-cellular levels. Digestion usually involves mechanical manipu. It also contains several vitamins and antioxidants.

Honey is a main ingredient in the beverage, mead, which is also known as "honey wine".

Honey is also used in traditional folk medicine. It is an excellent natural preservative. Honey is, however, not always healthy. Because it is gathered from flowers in the wild, there are certain times and places when the honey produced is toxic, see Grayanotoxin. Rhododendrons and azaleas have nectar that is poisonous to humans although harmless to bees, producing the toxic honey. In some areas of the world the hives are emptied immediately after the flowering season and cleaned of any residue to prevent accidental poisoning. Such poisonous honey is very rarely encountered. The shape of the Azalea flower makes access to nectar difficult for honeybees, and during the time at which Azaleas bloom there are almost always other flowers in bloom that are more appealing to the honeybee.

Honey (as well as other sweeteners) is also potentially extremely dangerous for infants. This is because, when mixed with the non-acidic digestive juices of an infant it creates an ideal medium for botulinum spores to grow and produce toxin. Botulinum spores are among the few bacteria that survive in honey, but also are widely present in the environment. While these spores are harmless to adults, because of stomach acidity, an infant's digestive system is not yet developed enough to destroy them, and the spores could potentially cause infant botulism. For this reason, it is advised that neither honey, nor any other sweetener, should be given to children under the age of 18 months.

Honey does not spoil. Because of its high sugar concentration, it kills bacteria by osmotically lysing them. Natural airborne yeasts can not become active in it because the moisture content is too low. Natural, raw, honey varies from 14% to 18% moisture content. As long as the moisture content remains under 18%, virtually no organism can successfully multiply to significant amounts in honey.

The study of pollens and spores in raw honey ( Melissopalynology) can determine floral sources of the honey. Because bees carry an electrostatic charge, and can attract other particles, the same techniques of Melissopalynology can be used in area environmental studies of radioactive particles, dust, or particulate pollution.

Almost all vegans avoid honey because it is technically an animal product.