Mankind has taken honey from bees for centuries and it is increasingly used by health conscious people. Honey was the main sweetener before sugar-cane and beet were available. It is a natural product containing many trace elements - nothing is added or taken away from honey before it reaches you. A full sized colony in summer can contain more than 50,000 bees.
Some people find that eating local honey throughout the year reduces hayfever problems.
Bees are essential to the pollination of many of our crops - there are not sufficient numbers of other insects that carry out this important task. However, honey does keep for a long time if kept in an air tight container. Honey has anti-bacterial properties and in times past was used to treat burns and wounds. Supermarket honey is invariably heat treated and heavily filtered. This process kills off some of the natural enzymes, spoils the taste and removes valuable pollen.