Honey is a sweet, viscous substance made by several species of bees, most notably honey bees, who produce and store it to nourish their colonies by gathering and refining the sugary secretions of plants, chiefly floral nectar, or the secretions of other insects such as aphid honeydew. This refinement happens both inside individual bees, through regurgitation and enzymatic activity, and during storage in the hive, through water evaporation that concentrates the honey's sugars until it becomes thick and viscous. Honey bees store the finished honey in the hive's beeswax honeycomb, a structure of hundreds or thousands of hexagonal cells into which the bees regurgitate it, while other honey-producing bee species store the substance in different structures, such as wax pots.
Facts
Earliest Documented Use, From (Year)Sourced to the subject's own accountThe source gives one floor estimate (at least 8,000 years ago), not a range, so the same year is recorded for both bounds. Origin RegionSourced to the subject's own accountCuevas de la Arana, Spain (earliest known depiction of honey gathering) 1 Connections
Sources
1. Honey (Wikipedia)
WikipediaLead sectionQuote, Lead section
Several cave paintings in Cuevas de la Arana in Spain depict humans foraging for honey at least 8,000 years ago.
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