Honey is a thick, golden, intensely sweet syrup made by honey bees (Apis mellifera) from the nectar of flowers. Bees gather nectar, reduce its water content and ripen it with their own enzymes into a supersaturated sugar liquid that resists spoilage almost indefinitely. Floral, fragrant and far sweeter than sugar, it ranges from nearly colourless water-white to opaque near-black, each tone carrying the perfume of the blossoms it came from.