Noun

honey (countable and uncountable; plural honeys)

1. (uncountable) A viscous, sweet fluid produced from plant nectar by bees. Often used to sweeten tea or to spread on baked goods.
2. (countable) A variety of this substance.
3. A thing likened to honey for its sweetness, desirability, etc.
   • 1595 Shakespeare, William, Romeo and Juliet, Act 5, Scene 3, lines 91-93:

     O my love, my wife! / Death, that hath suck'd the honey of thy breath / Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty."

4. A term of affection.

   Honey, would you take out the trash?

5. (informal, countable) An attractive woman

   Man, there are some fine honeys here tonight!

6. A spectrum of pale yellow to brownish-yellow colour, like that of most types of (the sweet substance) honey.

   honey colour:

Synonyms

• (sweet fluid from bees): mel

Honey (English pronunciation: /ˈhʌni/) is a sweet food made by bees using nectar from flowers. The variety produced by honey bees (the genus Apis) is the one most commonly referred to and is the type of honey collected by beekeepers and consumed by humans. Honey produced by other bees and insects has distinctly different properties.

Honey bees form nectar into honey by a process of regurgitation and store it as a food source in wax honeycombs inside the beehive. Beekeeping practices encourage overproduction of honey so that the excess can be taken without endangering the bee colony.

Honey gets its sweetness from the monosaccharides fructose and glucose and has approximately the same relative sweetness as that of granulated sugar. It has attractive chemical properties for baking, and a distinctive flavor which leads some people to prefer it over sugar and other sweeteners. Most micro-organisms do not grow in honey because of its low water activity of 0.6. However, honey sometimes contains dormant endospores of the bacterium Clostridium botulinum, which can be dangerous to infants as the endospores can transform into toxin-producing bacteria in the infant's immature intestinal tract, leading to illness and even death (see Health hazards below).

Honey has a long history of human consumption and is used in various foods and beverages as a sweetener and flavoring. It also has a role in religion and symbolism. Flavors of honey vary based on the nectar source, and various types and grades of honey are available. It is also used in various medicinal traditions to treat ailments. The study of pollens and spores in raw honey (melissopalynology) can determine floral sources of 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.