Only a very small number of organic food substances can last for thousands of years without spoiling. Honey is one of them. In 2003, archaeologists excavating a burial mound in Georgia in the Caucasus, found ceramic vessels dating to roughly 5,500 years ago with residue verified by chemical analysts as honey.

Honey is biologically and scientifically considered practically immortal. It never truly spoils. Its unique chemical makeup—extremely low moisture, high acidity, and natural sugars—creates an inhospitable environment for bacteria, yeast, or mold.

Bacteria and fungi need water to grow. Honey contains just 18% of water by weight and that water is locked into hydrogen bonds with surrounding sugar molecules, making it essentially unavailable to any microbe that lands on it. In addition, honey is acidic, with a pH between 3 and 4.5, comparable to a glass of orange juice or vinegar diluted in water. Most spoilage bacteria requires pH values closer to 6 or 7 to grow.

Another hurdle is hydrogen peroxide. Bees secrete an enzyme called glucose oxidase into the nectar they collect. This enzyme catalyzes a slow conversion of glucose into gluconic acid and hydrogen peroxide. Scientific research confirms that hydrogen peroxide is honey’s strongest defense against bacterial activity. The peroxide concentration in honey is small, but it is produced continuously as long as the enzyme has glucose and water to work with, which provides a slow-release antimicrobial effect that can last for years.

To be sure, honey is not absolutely immortal. If honey absorbs enough water from the environment to push its water activity above 0.6, the wild yeasts that are naturally present in raw honey can begin to ferment the sugars. That is why honey needs to stay sealed. The second factor is contamination by foreign material that introduces its own microbial load, thus compromising the chemical integrity of honey. What honey does not need is refrigeration which merely causes the natural sugars in honey to crystallize faster, making it thick, grainy, and hard to scoop. Because of its unique natural composition, honey will never spoil as long as it is stored correctly, something the ancients knew long before modern science could confirm.