Honey never spoils–Archaeologists have dug up jars of the stuff from ancient civilizations, perfectly edible after thousands of years in the earth.

The secret is honey’s hostile environment for bacteria and fungi–It’s essentially concentrated sugar syrup with moisture levels so low they’re almost nonexistent. Any microbe that attempts to enter is dehydrated immediately.

The sugar molecules suck every last bit of water from invading cells, which dry up and die.

But honey doesn’t even leave it at that. It also has a pH of approximately 4, rendering it an acidic wasteland in which most pathogens cannot survive–On top of that, bees leave behind glucose oxidase during production.

This enzyme slowly converts sugars into hydrogen peroxide, rendering honey an ongoing antiseptic factory. So bacteria are dehydrated, acid burned, and chemically attacked simultaneously–It’s biologic overkill that keeps honey indefinitely.

Honey lasts forever–Men have found pots of it in Egyptian tombs, still good to eat after thousands of years. The reason is that honey is a death trap for anything that tries to live in it–It is a thick swamp of sugar with almost no water. Any germ that lands there has the life sucked out of it instantly. The water inside its own body is pulled out, and it dies of thirst.

If that does not kill it, the acid will. Honey is naturally acidic enough to stop microbes from growing–And the bees add their own poison. An enzyme from their bodies creates a constant, small supply of hydrogen peroxide. So a germ that falls into honey faces a desert, an acid bath, and a poison all at once–Nothing survives that.