What is honey?
Honey is a natural sweet product produced by bees, predominantly honey bees (Apis sp.). Honey is a mixture of floral secretions (mostly nectar from different plants) and honey dew (a sugar-based excretion derived from insects). The nectar of can plants have distinct properties which, when collected in large enough quantities, can give the honey a characteristic taste, aroma, and/or colour. Honeys can be classified into two categories, being monofloral (a honey dominated by a single nectar source) or multifloral (a blend of nectar sources with no dominant source).
How is honey produced?
Honey bees will forage for sugar resources within an 8 km radius around their hive. The honey bees store the foraged sugar resources in their honey stomach until their return to the hive. As the honey bees forage they will start to dehydrate the sugar mixture, allowing them to collect more resources in a concentrated form.
At the hive, the forager bees will transfer the condensed mixture to the hive bees and then return to foraging. The hive bees then deposit the mixture into a comb cell, where they continue to dehydrate the mixture until most of the moisture is removed (<20%). Once it reaches this point, the honey is ripe and is capped with wax for later consumption.
How does honey differ from syrup?
Honey and syrup both consist of sugars but differ in the types of major and minor sugars and their proportions of each. Honey mostly consists of glucose and fructose, with a small percentage of sucrose whereas many syrups are dominated by sucrose with minor proportions of other sugars. Differences between how honey and syrups are made also result in compositional differences. Enzymes from the stomachs of honey bees get transferred into the honey, which contributes to its medicinal properties. Syrups do not have the same enzymes and so do not offer the same medicinal properties.
A key difference between honey and syrup is the sources used for their production. Honey is produced from nectar and honeydew sources, resulting in the extraordinary diversity of honey types available. Syrups are made from the same sources every time, and so do not show the variation in qualities that you find in honey.