Why Is Bee Honey Kosher? The Talmud’s Answer Centuries Ahead of Science

One might reasonably wonder: how is it that we eat bee honey, and how did our ancestors eat it as well? After all, although honey originates from nectar, it is inconceivable that the nectar is expelled exactly as it entered, without any admixture. If that were the case, it would be expelled while still nectar. The very formation of honey requires the addition of some substance secreted by the bee — something that processes the nectar and transforms it into honey.

The Comparison to Milk from a Non-Kosher Animal

Just as grass eaten by a camel is processed in the camel’s body and becomes milk — and that milk is forbidden for consumption because of the principle “that which comes from an impure source is impure” — so too honey should seemingly be forbidden for exactly the same reason. After all, bees themselves are forbidden for consumption.

Digestive Juices: An Even Stronger Objection

Moreover, even if it were theoretically possible for honey to form from nectar without any bodily secretion from the bee, it is certain that various digestive juices are secreted into the bee’s stomach, as occurs in the stomach of any other living creature. At the very least, due to the mixture of these digestive fluids with the nectar, the Sages of Israel should have prohibited honey.

Scientific Discoveries That Changed the Picture

Later scientific research, however, revealed two astonishing facts:

First, the bee has two stomachs:

• a digestive stomach, and

• a honey stomach.

Second, the honey stomach contains no digestive juices at all.

With the discovery of this fact, the latter concern regarding digestive fluids, was resolved. What about the original problem?

Enzymes Without Residue

Further research uncovered another remarkable fact. The honey stomach does indeed secrete an enzyme that breaks down the nectar’s molecules, converting them from disaccharides into monosaccharides (honey contains invert sugar, which is primarily an almost equal mixture of glucose — grape sugar, and fructose — fruit sugar).

However, once the enzyme secreted by the bee completes its function and the nectar is transformed into honey, the enzyme itself breaks down completely, leaving no trace whatsoever. The bee then regurgitates the honey into the honeycomb in a pure form, without any admixture.

It is now clear why we are permitted to eat bee honey.

It is reasonable to assume that had a university existed in Talmudic times, and its scientists been asked whether bee honey should be permitted according to Jewish law, their answer would almost certainly have been an unequivocal prohibition — just like the milk of a non-kosher animal. Logic alone would dictate that some substance from the bee’s body must be mixed into it.

The Talmudic Ruling — Centuries Ahead of Science

And yet, remarkably, in the Oral Torah, our Sages received from their teachers, who received from their teachers, all the way back to Moshe our teacher, the following concise and decisive ruling, recorded in the Talmud (Bechorot 7b): “Bee honey is permitted, because the bees bring it into their bodies, but do not extract it from their bodies.”

In other words, bee honey is not comparable to the milk of a non-kosher animal. Honey contains no extracted substance from the bee’s body; it emerges containing only what entered it.

Who could have known, thousands of years ago, this secret of nature — so contrary to simple logic and to the seemingly perfect analogy with milk — and stated it with absolute certainty, with far-reaching halachic consequences, if not the Creator of the world Himself?