A clay pot of dark honey with a wooden dipper beside a piece of honeycomb, a beeswax candle, a fragment of painted pottery showing a bee, and an old glass jar of amber honey in warm light

Honey Before Sugar

Published 9 Sep 20266 min read

Before cheap sugar, the sweet things within reach of most people were mainly fruit, fresh in season or dried, and one substance made by insects, often taken from wild nests at real risk. In Europe, sugar remained a costly luxury through the medieval and early modern periods and became cheap only in the nineteenth century, so for most of European history, "sweet" largely meant honey. Honey served as food, medicine and offering. How people gathered it, used it and finally replaced it explains a good deal about the jar in a kitchen today. The complete honey guide covers what is in the jar; this piece covers what the jar meant before sugar was cheap.

The honey hunters

One of the oldest known images of human honey gathering is a rock painting at the Cuevas de la Araña near Bicorp, in the Valencia region of eastern Spain, dated to around eight thousand years ago, though estimates vary: a figure hanging on ropes or vines reaches into a wild nest in the rock, surrounded by stylized bees. Honey hunting of much the same kind continues today. In Nepal, Gurung honey hunters climb cliffs on handmade rope ladders to cut down the nests of giant cliff bees, work in which many hunters are wounded and which can sometimes be fatal.

The anthropologist Alyssa Crittenden studies honey in the diet of the Hadza of Tanzania, one of the few remaining hunter-gatherer peoples. Honey is energy-dense, and Crittenden argues that it, alongside meat and plant foods, supplied early humans with energy-producing nutrients important to brain growth. She counts Paleolithic rock art of people raiding hives among the evidence for that argument.

Egypt: the first pictured hives

By the Old Kingdom, Egyptians were keeping bees. A relief from about 2400 BCE in the sun temple of the pharaoh Niuserre at Abu Ghurab, the earliest known Egyptian picture of beekeeping, shows a beekeeper taking honey from horizontal, cylindrical hives while others pour it into jars for storage. Honey went into the tombs, where jars of it have been found among grave goods, and one modern review says it was used in embalming. It also dressed wounds: honey, grease and lint made up the most common Egyptian wound plaster. Honey's low water content, acidity and natural hydrogen peroxide help it resist bacteria, which is why medical-grade honey is used in wound care today.

Greece and Rome

Aristotle described bees at length in his History of Animals, though he took the queen for a king and set out several competing accounts of how bees reproduce. The honey of Mount Hymettus near Athens was among the most celebrated of the ancient world. The geographer Strabo wrote that Hymettus produces the best honey. Pliny the Elder named Hymettus among the districts where honey is always best, and judged honey made from thyme the most serviceable, golden in color and of a most delicious flavor.

The Romans kept bees systematically, and the agricultural writer Varro gives detailed instructions for hive management. He advises placing hives near the farmhouse but away from echoes, smearing wicker hives with cow dung inside and out, and inspecting the hives about three times a month in spring and summer, smoking the bees lightly and sweeping out vermin.

Mead and the north

In the north, honey was drunk as well as eaten. Mead, honey fermented with water, is widely thought to be among the oldest alcoholic drinks, and in Anglo-Saxon literature, including Beowulf, it is the drink of kings and thanes. Through the Middle Ages it was common in northern countries where grapevines did not flourish. By the fourteenth century, spiced ale and pyment, a wine made with honey, were overtaking it in popularity. The word "honeymoon" first appears in English in the sixteenth century, and early dictionary-makers explained it as affection that wanes like the moon. The story of newlyweds drinking mead for a month is unlikely to be the origin of the word.

Then sugar

Sugar had been refined from cane for centuries in India, the Middle East and Arab-controlled southern Europe before the wealthiest western Europeans took it up as a medicine and a culinary ingredient, and it was one of the most precious luxuries of premodern Europe. From the twelfth century Venetians produced it at Mediterranean sites, though only in small quantities, and Spanish and Portuguese growers carried it to Atlantic islands such as Madeira and the Canary Islands, where they met the same limits. Between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, European powers made sugar a main industry of the Caribbean and northeast South America, on plantations worked by enslaved Africans in dangerous, even deadly, conditions. By the nineteenth century prices had fallen so far that consumers at every economic level treated sugar as a necessity, a story the sugar history guide follows in full. Honey became less a staple sweetener and more a flavor, chosen as much for what it tastes of as for its sweetness.

Honey and sugar, side by side

Set side by side, the dated milestones show how long honey had the job of sweetness to itself before sugar became cheap.

When	Honey	Sugar
About 8,000 years ago (estimates vary)	Honey gathering painted at the Cuevas de la Araña, Bicorp	-
About 2400 BCE	Beekeeping relief in Niuserre's sun temple at Abu Ghurab	-
384 to 322 BCE	Aristotle's lifetime; he writes on bees in the History of Animals	-
Roman period	Varro's hive instructions; Strabo and Pliny praise Hymettus honey	-
From the 12th century	Mead still common in the north (Middle Ages generally)	Venetian production at Mediterranean sites, in small quantities
By the 14th century	Spiced ale and pyment (wine with honey) overtaking mead in popularity	-
1546	"Honeymoon" first recorded in English	-
16th to 18th centuries	-	A main industry of the Caribbean and northeast South America, on enslaved labor
19th century	-	Prices fall; sugar becomes a necessity at every economic level

What the history explains

Why honey keeps well, though not forever: the low water content, acidity and hydrogen peroxide that made it a wound dressing help it resist spoilage, but honey stored at normal temperatures still changes color and taste over time. Why varietal honey exists: a honey's color and flavor depend on the flowers the bees visited, as Pliny already observed of thyme honey.

Varietal honeys still carry the name of the bloom the bees worked, as Bee Squared Apiaries Orange Blossom Honey (shop Bee Squared Orange Blossom Honey) and Jacobsen Salt Co. Raw Buckwheat Honey (shop Jacobsen Raw Buckwheat Honey) do in their names (shop the honey collection).

A spoonful of either is the same substance the Bicorp painter showed someone climbing for, now chosen as much for the flowers it tastes of as for its sweetness.