The 3,000-year-old jar, and the chemistry of immortality

It is a story every food writer loves to repeat. An archaeologist opens a sealed vessel in a 3,000-year-old Egyptian tomb, dips a spoon into the amber, and finds the honey sweet and entirely edible.

The record is less tidy. When the tomb of Yuya and Tjuyu was opened in 1905, Arthur Weigall was there. He saw an alabaster vase holding “a liquid, like honey or syrup, still unsolidified by time.” Theodore Davis, whose excavation it was, later wrote that it had proved to be natron.

Example of an ancient Egyptian vessel. AI generated. 

Whether the tasting is historical fact or archaeological folklore hardly matters. The chemistry behind the story is real. Few foods on Earth are as hostile to microbial life as honey. How did nature engineer a food that refuses to spoil?

Why does honey never spoil?

The alchemy starts with nectar, which holds much more water than honey. Worker bees add enzymes from glands in their heads, among them glucose oxidase. Then they drive the water out. They work droplets with their mouthparts and keep air moving through the hive until the nectar thickens.

Dryness is the first defence. Ripe honey holds around 17% water. Almost none of it is free for anything else to use. Bacteria need far more available water to grow. A microbe that lands on the surface loses its own water to the sugar by osmosis — and cannot multiply.

Acidity is the second. Honey sits between pH 3.2 and 4.5, mostly thanks to gluconic acid. Most bacteria prefer conditions close to neutral.

Finally, the bees seal each cell with wax. Researchers who scanned honeycomb found that ripening continues even as capping begins — “a race against water absorption,” in their words. Concentrated honey is hygroscopic. Left open, it pulls moisture from the air, and with enough of it, honey can ferment. Remember this. It matters later.

Does honey make its own hydrogen peroxide?

The third defence is quieter, and it waits. In full-strength honey, glucose oxidase is all but dormant. Add water and it wakes. It turns glucose into gluconic acid and a slow trickle of hydrogen peroxide. Levels peak when honey is diluted to between 30% and 50% strength.

So honey does not sterilise itself continuously. It keeps a defence in reserve for the moment water arrives.

Nor is it truly sterile. Raw honey can carry dormant bacterial spores — it simply gives them no chance to grow. And it is not quite immortal. A 2,500-year-old honey offering from a shrine at Paestum, in southern Italy, had become a waxy paste. It took mass spectrometry, in 2025, to find the traces of honey still inside it.

It keeps a defence in reserve for the moment water arrives.

What makes Manuka honey different?

New Zealand Manuka honey has a fourth defence of its own. The nectar of the Manuka bush, Leptospermum scoparium, carries a compound called dihydroxyacetone. In the jar, slowly, it turns into methylglyoxal — MGO. Freshly made Manuka holds little of it. The MGO builds as the honey matures.

The difference is striking. Food chemists in Dresden measured MGO in Manuka at up to 100 times the level of conventional honeys. They identified it as the main source of Manuka’s antibacterial activity in the laboratory. Ordinary honey leans on hydrogen peroxide. Manuka relies chiefly on MGO instead.

The number on a jar of Manuka is its MGO content, in milligrams per kilogram. It is worth reading closely. When researchers in Western Australia checked 24 labelled Manuka honeys, two in three were within 100 mg/kg of the label. A few were far off. Our honey comes from New Zealand and is graded 800+ MGO. In a balm, that grade describes the honey that goes in, not the finished formula.

Is Manuka honey good for your lips?

Here the hive’s problem becomes the lips’ advantage. The same thirst for water that makes bees cap their honey makes it a natural humectant. Humectants attract water and help the outer layer of skin hold on to it. Honey has been part of skin care since the earliest civilisations, and it still appears in lip ointments today.

But a humectant alone is only half a gesture. It can draw water up from deeper layers to the surface, where it simply evaporates. So moisturisers often pair humectants with lipids that seal the surface. The bees reached the same answer with wax.

That is the logic of our honey formulas. The Manuka honey draws in moisture. The Signature Phyto-Lipid Complex melts onto the lips and seals it in. The result is a surface that feels soft, supple and comfortable. You will find the honey in the Signature Lip Kit, Treatment to Go , Treatment to Glam and the Tinted Elixir. The key ingredients are described on the Ingredients page.

What honey does not do on the lips matters too. Much of Manuka’s reputation comes from laboratory tests, and from wound care with medical-grade honey. A lip balm is not a wound dressing. So we keep to what you can feel — softness, comfort, a supple surface.

Manuka honey needs time to mature. In their own way, so do our formulas — each is given 30 days to structure.

It is a quiet reminder that some of the most sophisticated chemistry was never designed at all. The bees simply got there first — and sealed it in wax.

Questions, briefly

Does honey ever go bad?

Kept sealed, it lasts a very long time. Honey that absorbs water from the air can ferment, which is why bees cap it with wax. Over centuries it does change — the Paestum honey had become a paste.

What does MGO mean on Manuka honey?

MGO is methylglyoxal, the compound chiefly behind Manuka’s antibacterial activity in laboratory tests. The number is its content in milligrams per kilogram. 800+ means at least 800 mg in every kilogram.

Can I put raw honey straight on my lips?

It is sticky, and on its own a humectant can also speed up moisture loss. That is why skin care pairs honey with lipids that seal the surface.