It’s no secret that natural honey is a delicious treat, but did you know it can be kept in an airtight container for thousands of years without spoiling? Thanks to its acidity and low moisture content, honey has a virtually endless shelf life. Unspoiled honey has even been found by archaeologists in ancient Egyptian tombs. Here are 4 more remarkable facts about everyone’s favorite natural sweetener.
Bees make a whole lot of honey.
An average bee colony produces between 30 and 100 pounds of honey every year. It’s a team effort, though. Each worker bee only produces about 1/12 teaspoon of honey in its entire lifetime.
They also depend on honey to survive the winter.
Bees love honey as much as we do. In fact, they need a high-energy diet of honey to survive harsh winters. A healthy bee colony might consume upwards of 30 pounds of honey during the winter.
People have been eating honey for thousands of years.
The earliest record of humans harvesting honey from hives was found on an ancient cave painting in Valencia, Spain that dates back to about 15,000 years ago.
Bees aren’t the only insects that make honey.
There is also a species of wasp native to Mexico that produces its own kind of honey as well. Because of the flowers that these wasps pollinate, however, their honey is occasionally poisonous. With this in mind, it’s probably best to stick to good old fashioned bee honey.
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