Honey

Honey is the sweet, thick store that bees make from nectar or honeydew, its sweetness coming chiefly from fructose and glucose. Kept with its water content at or below about eighteen per cent, it does not spoil, and honey found by archaeologists has stayed edible for millennia. Ancient Greeks and Egyptians, and Ayurvedic and traditional Chinese medicine, used it inwardly and on the skin for stomach troubles, ulcers, wounds and burns, and Muhammad recommended it for healing. Cunningham names a little honey among the gifts that may be buried in the soil as an offering to the Earth before gathering stones.

Beeswax is secreted as small scales by worker honey bees from eight glands on the underside of the abdomen, and the bees shape it into the cells of the comb. Fresh wax is clear, then yellows or browns with pollen and propolis; rendered wax runs from nearly white to brown, most often yellow, and melts at around 62 to 64 °C. It has been found in Egyptian tombs, Viking wrecks and Roman ruins, and has served for candles, lost-wax casting, writing tablets, sealing wax, cosmetics and encaustic painting. Churches have long preferred it for candles: it was prescribed for the Easter candle and is the wax of choice in Eastern Orthodox churches.