How do bees make honey?

Forager bees collect nectar from flowers and store it in a specialized crop, sometimes called the honey stomach, separate from their digestive stomach. Enzymes there begin converting the nectar's complex sugars into simpler ones, principally glucose and fructose. Back at the hive the forager passes the load to a house bee mouth to mouth, and it may be transferred several times, with each pass adding enzymes and reducing moisture. The bees then deposit it in wax cells and fan their wings vigorously to evaporate water, bringing the moisture content down from around 70 percent in nectar to roughly 17 to 18 percent in finished honey.

That low water content is why honey does not spoil. Combined with high sugar concentration, mild acidity, and small amounts of hydrogen peroxide produced by an enzyme the bees add, it creates an environment in which microorganisms cannot grow. Sealed honey recovered from Egyptian tombs has been reported as still edible, and properly stored honey does not require refrigeration and does not go bad, though it crystallizes over time, which is a physical change reversible with gentle warming rather than a sign of spoilage.

Some scale and caveats. A single worker bee produces roughly a twelfth of a teaspoon of honey in her entire life, and a colony may visit millions of flowers to fill a jar. Honey's color and flavor depend entirely on the flowers foraged, which is why varietal honeys differ so much. Two practical notes: honey should never be given to infants under one year old because it can contain Clostridium botulinum spores that an immature digestive system cannot handle, causing infant botulism, and honey adulteration with cheaper syrups is a documented and widespread problem in global supply chains, so provenance matters if you care about what you are buying.