Context: Honey is a sugary food substance produced and stored by certain social hymenopteran insects. It is produced from the sugary secretions of plants or insects, such as floral nectar or aphid honeydew, through regurgitation, enzymatic activity, and water evaporation. The variety of honey produced by honey bees (the genus "Apis") is the most well-known, due to its worldwide commercial production and human consumption.
Honey gets its sweetness from the monosaccharides fructose and glucose, and has about the same relative sweetness as granulated sugar. It has attractive chemical properties for baking and a distinctive flavor that leads some people to prefer it to sugar and other sweeteners. Most microorganisms do not grow in honey, so sealed honey does not spoil, even after thousands of years. However, honey sometimes contains dormant endospores of the bacterium "Clostridium botulinum", which can be dangerous to babies, as it may result in botulism.
People who have a weakened immune system should not eat honey because of the risk of bacterial or fungal infection. Although some evidence indicates honey may be effective in treating diseases and other medical conditions, such as wounds and burns, the overall evidence for its use in therapy is not conclusive. Providing 64 calories in a typical serving of one tablespoon (15 ml) equivalent to 1272 kj per 100 g, honey has no significant nutritional value. Honey is generally safe, but may have various, potential adverse effects or interactions with excessive consumption, existing disease conditions, or drugs.
Honey use and production have a long and varied history as an ancient activity, depicted in Valencia, Spain by a cave painting of humans foraging for honey at least 8,000 years ago., The Maltese honey bee , Apis mellifera ruttneri , is a sub-species of the Western honey bee . It originates from Malta where it is native ., The western honey bee or European honey bee ("Apis mellifera") is the most common of the 7-12 species of honey bee worldwide. The genus name "Apis" is Latin for "bee", and "mellifera" means "honey-bearing", referring to the species' tendency to produce a large quantity of honey for storage over the winter., A honey bee (or honeybee) is any bee member of the genus Apis, primarily distinguished by the production and storage of honey and the construction of perennial, colonial nests from wax. Currently, only seven species of honey bee are recognized, with a total of 44 subspecies, though historically, from six to eleven species have been recognized. The best known honey bee is the Western honey bee which has been domesticated for honey production and crop pollination. Honey bees represent only a small fraction of the roughly 20,000 known species of bees. Some other types of related bees produce and store honey, including the stingless honey bees, but only members of the genus "Apis" are true honey bees. The study of bees including honey bees is known as melittology., A genus ( genera) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms in biology. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial nomenclature, the genus name forms the first part of the binomial species name for each species within the genus., Latin (Latin: ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. The Latin alphabet is derived from the Etruscan and Greek alphabets., An archipelago, sometimes called an island group or island chain, is a chain, cluster or collection of islands. The word "archipelago" is derived from the Greek "-  arkhi-" ("chief") and "  pélagos" ("sea") through the Italian "arcipelago". In Italian, possibly following a tradition of antiquity, the Archipelago (from medieval Greek "*" and Latin "archipelagus") was the proper name for the Aegean Sea and, later, usage shifted to refer to the Aegean Islands (since the sea is remarkable for its large number of islands). It is now used to refer to any island group or, sometimes, to a sea containing a small number of scattered islands., Bears are carnivoran mammals of the family Ursidae. Bears are classified as caniforms, or doglike carnivorans. Although only eight species of bears are extant, they are widespread, appearing in a wide variety of habitats throughout the Northern Hemisphere and partially in the Southern Hemisphere. Bears are found on the continents of North America, South America, Europe, and Asia. Common characteristics of modern bears include large bodies with stocky legs, long snouts, small rounded ears, shaggy hair, plantigrade paws with five nonretractile claws, and short tails., Malta, officially known as the Republic of Malta, is a Southern European island country consisting of an archipelago in the Mediterranean Sea. It lies south of Italy, east of Tunisia, and north of Libya. The country covers just over , with a population of just under 450,000, making it one of the world's smallest and most densely populated countries. The capital of Malta is Valletta, which at 0.8 km, is the smallest national capital in the European Union. Malta has two official languages: Maltese and English., Subject: maltese honey bee, Relation: taxon_rank, Options: (A) branch (B) family (C) genus (D) group (E) species (F) subspecies (G) variety
Output: subspecies