How to store honey: how long it keeps, where and how

In 1954, archaeologists uncovered bronze jars at Paestum, in southern Italy, left in a Greek sanctuary of the sixth century BC. Three successive teams analysed the sticky orange-brown substance inside without recognising honey: it took Oxford chemists, in 2025, to prove it. Honey does not go off like yoghurt, but it does not cross the centuries intact either. Between the legend and the reality, there is your cupboard.

Not in the sense of a deadline. A jar of honey carries a best before date, not a use by date.

A best before date tells you how long a food keeps its appearance, smell, taste and texture. GOV.UK is plain: use-by dates relate to the safety of food, best before dates to quality, and after a best before date food is usually safe to eat but may not be of the same quality. On our jars, the best before date is printed on every label, as our frequently asked questions recall.

And the Paestum jars? After twenty-five centuries, nothing remained of the honey but a chemical signature: sugars, organic acids, royal jelly proteins. Honey changes slowly: storing it well means slowing that change.

An open jar is kept closed, dry, and sees nothing but a clean, dry spoon. Three gestures are enough, because honey’s main enemy is water.

Honey is highly hygroscopic: it takes up moisture from the air. According to the Swiss Bee Research Centre, it starts doing so once the air exceeds 60% relative humidity, a level most cellars exceed.

Why such rigour? Because water opens the door to fermentation. In England, honey must not have begun to ferment: the only honey the regulations allow to do so is baker’s honey, meant to be used as an ingredient.

Closed: screw the lid back on as soon as you have served. Dry: keep it away from the sink, the kettle and the dishwasher. Clean spoon: never the one that has just come out of the tea or the yoghurt, never a buttery knife that leaves crumbs.

In a dark cupboard, at room temperature, away from the oven, the hob and the window. Never in the fridge: this is the instruction on each of our product pages.

Here is the paradox few people know: it is not deep cold that sets honey, it is coolness. Crystallisation is fastest between 10 and 18 °C, with a constant 14 °C ideal. In the freezer, on the contrary, honey stays liquid longer.

The fridge adds nothing: the cold thickens honey, and the spoon struggles. Heat, for its part, spoils in silence. The Swiss Bee Research Centre recommends a cool, dry place with no strong smell, and its trials show that honey stored in light and warmth darkens: a sunny windowsill is the worst place in the kitchen.

Honey that hardens or turns pale is not spoiled: it is crystallising, and that is natural. The process is reversible, provided you never heat it hard.

It all comes down to glucose, more or less abundant depending on the flower: read why honey crystallises. Two details often surprise. Above 25 °C, honey crystallises slowly, but in coarse crystals. And the fine white marbling that sometimes appears against the glass has a name, frosting: air lodged between the crystals, a natural phenomenon.

To get a runnier honey back, a lukewarm water bath is enough, never above 40 °C, stirring gently. Never the microwave: Agroscope, the Swiss agricultural research centre, advises against it because it alters the honey. English law points the same way: honey must not have been heated so that its natural enzymes are destroyed or significantly inactivated.

Three things spoil honey: water, heat and light. Time acts slowly when the jar is well kept.

Water first. When a too-damp honey crystallises, it sometimes separates into two layers. The upper one, more watery, is where yeasts can multiply and start fermentation. The regulations cap water content at 20% for most honeys.

Heat next. It raises HMF, a compound whose high level signals, in the words of the Michel Bocquet laboratory, “ageing or heating of the honey”. The legal limit is 40 mg/kg. According to the values published by the Swiss Bee Research Centre, it takes several years to reach it at 20 °C, and one to two months at 40 °C.

And our jars? The published analyses give the figures.

CETAM reports M251998 and M253022, Michel Bocquet analysis of 3 February 2026. The Rose Aromiel from Russia, a honey-based preparation, is not in this table. All the documents are gathered on our page lab analysis and traceability.

The House’s four jars are kept in the same way: closed, dry, away from light, never in the fridge. What changes is how each one evolves.

White Honey from Kyrgyzstan: the cream that forms by itself

The White Honey from Kyrgyzstan is a sainfoin honey, and sainfoin crystallises naturally into a very fine grain. Nothing is heated or whipped: the ivory cream forms by itself, in the jar. The laboratory noted a “very fine and very supple crystallisation”.

Do not try to make it runny: you would take away its signature. At room temperature, the spoon enters the cream and the trace closes behind it.

Jujubier Honey from Yemen: thick liquid, long finish

Our Jujubier Honey from Yemen is described by the laboratory as a “thick liquid”. With 14.2% water, it is the driest of our three analysed honeys. When it crystallises, slowly, its taste does not change.

One small spoonful at a time, then the lid back on at once: its finish of caramel and warm wood deserves it. On a mature blue cheese it takes its full measure; our festive honey and cheese board gives the pairings.

Egyptian Black Seed Honey: the dry spoon above all

The Egyptian Black Seed Honey pours thick and takes a moment to leave the spoon. Its analysis measures 18.3% water, a value the laboratory judges within the norm. It is also the highest of our three analysed honeys: for it, the dry spoon is not a precaution, it is a rule.

Raw, never heated or pasteurised, it may crystallise in time, at its own pace. Keep it away from the cooker and the kettle: its peppery finish, which comes from the flower, will wait for you.

Rose Aromiel from Russia: a fragrance to protect from heat

The Rose Aromiel from Russia is not a honey but a preparation: acacia honey worked cold with a rosehip extract, the fruit of the dog rose. Its acacia base crystallises very slowly, and its creamy texture stays stable for a long time.

Its sensitive point is heat, because its fragrance is volatile: never above 40 °C, never in the microwave, and in tea, add it at the end. To understand what people call “rose honey”, read our explanation of the Rose Aromiel.

One last rule for those who like jars in reserve: open only one at a time, and let the others wait, closed, in the dark of their box. That is the logic of the 3-month ritual offered on each honey’s page, and of the box that brings three origins together.

Gift box · 3 origins together

The Ritual Box

White Honey, Egyptian Black Seed Honey and Jujubier Honey in the signature presentation box, spoons included. Three jars to open one after another.

Discover the gift box