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Would honey be feasible as a kind of money? It seems ideal to me and I'm wondering if I'm missing something.

Honey is:

  • imperishable (like gold is)
  • hard to mass-produce or massively scale production of
  • infinitely divisible, by the milliliter or similar unit
  • intrinsically appealing. Gold is shiny; honey is sweet.

These seem like good properties for a currency. Imperishability makes it a store of value. Divisibility makes it a unit of account.

Maybe fungibility is a problem: some honeys are better than others.

I know there are some synthetic honeys made without bees, and they could probably be scaled up, but let's just assume they're detected and dismissed as fake.

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    $\begingroup$ Honey is consumable, gold is not. Honey is not easily transported and its unsanitary thanks to its sugary properties. How do you even barter with honey as you can do with gold coins? Gold can be shaped into coins when alloyed with various harder metals. Honey need to be put into containers of questionable weight and material. $\endgroup$
    – Henry Shao
    Commented Aug 20, 2021 at 16:11
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    $\begingroup$ @HenryShao -- Gold is totally consumable! Turn it into a crown or some other sacrosanct artifact and the gold is removed from circulation. Use it for medicine or, assuming technological advancement, electronics and the gold is effectively removed from circulation. Drop it into a deep lake as a sacrifice and it's as good as never existed! $\endgroup$
    – elemtilas
    Commented Aug 20, 2021 at 16:33
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    $\begingroup$ The are many problems with honey as intrinsic value money. (1) there is too much of it, and anybody can make more; (2) it is much less imperishable than gold, silver, copper and even than iron; (3) it is of extremely varying quality (for example, how much water it contains); (4) it is very hard to assay it's quality before modern chemistry. $\endgroup$
    – AlexP
    Commented Aug 20, 2021 at 16:47
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    $\begingroup$ The problem is the ease with which impurities can be introduced, even if you use a solidified/dehydrated form as currency, it is very easy to rehydrate, mix with other additives and dehydrate again. So controlling the quality of the product becomes an issue. This was an issue with solid metal trading, but it was harder to fake. If eveyone produce or dilute or modify your currency at home, how do you regulate the value? $\endgroup$
    – Chris Schaller
    Commented Aug 21, 2021 at 4:14
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    $\begingroup$ The Wikipedia page on Money should show you why honey (really, any barter good) is less efficient than precious metals and fiat currency as money. Every barter economy moves towards what we think of as money when it gets sophisticated enough. $\endgroup$
    – RonJohn
    Commented Aug 21, 2021 at 4:45

6 Answers 6

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It can be compared to alcohol, another edible good that at times was used as currency

Vodka was used as a currency in Russia when other currencies were not stable.

In modern Australia there are Facebook groups devoted to bartering in beer.

According to this site, which references an NPR broadcast, "hard cider served as a currency in the North American colonies."

Honey can last just as long as alcohol can. A modern gallon of honey has about a quarter the price of a gallon of vodka, which is not too far off.

The main condition for alcohol - and therefore honey - to become widespread as a currency is when the usual currency is highly unstable and untrusted, or not available.

It would actually be quite simple with only medieval tools to detect whether someone is diluting their honey with water, using a method similar to the Scoville scale, relying on the human taste buds. You dissolve a bit of the honey to be tested in a lot of water (a standardized amount of water) and see if the sweet taste is still detectable. If it is still detectable, then the honey must have been sufficiently concentrated and not diluted. Or as a quick and dirty test, the person accepting the honey could just taste a tiny amount of it on their finger and decide based on that. (Not very sanitary, but they didn't care about such things in medieval times.)

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  • $\begingroup$ The Russians traded vodka because the ruble was worthless; Australians buy their booze -- or the source ingredients -- with AUD; American Colonists had to barter with what they had because there was a lack of coinage and paper in the colonies. $\endgroup$
    – RonJohn
    Commented Aug 21, 2021 at 4:50
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    $\begingroup$ I suspect in the time of the legionaries, salt was relatively more expensive than honey (compared to now). The production of salt was much industrialized since then, honey not so much. $\endgroup$
    – Paŭlo Ebermann
    Commented Aug 21, 2021 at 14:45
  • $\begingroup$ @RonJohn ruble wasn't worthless at any period of time, do not mistake it for somaliland toilet paper, lol. Vodka can't inflate, so it had better store value, until consumed, lol. It may work today as well, if you can't kill a cow just give a bottle or two to a mujik and he wil, do it, lol. $\endgroup$
    – MolbOrg
    Commented Aug 21, 2021 at 19:02
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    $\begingroup$ It's a lot worse than alcohol or salt, both which are trivial to measure and divide without producing much if any waste . Honey sticks to everything. But also those are also really bad "currencies" , there's a reason they haven't been used in centuries in any major economy. $\endgroup$
    – eps
    Commented Aug 21, 2021 at 21:00
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    $\begingroup$ Wikipedia also suggests that Roman soldiers paid in salt also appears to be myth, it's one of those things that's often repeated but apparently there's no good evidence to support the claim. $\endgroup$
    – eps
    Commented Aug 21, 2021 at 21:18
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imperishable

No.

Frame challenge time.

You may have been impressed by some stories of honey found in ancient Egyptian tombs and still being good. But that's because of a combination of factors. Even the tiniest amount of humidity will spoil honey over time. If it is to be used as currency, at the very least you have to check for its authenticity. Then you open that lid and some humidity from the atmosphere comes in... that jar won't last forever.

On top of that, your mint is an apiary. There are so many logistical problems with that, your economist friends could have nightmares about them. Colony collapse disorder could lead your economy into catastrophic scenarios that would take decades to recover from.

Anybody with a farm could also print their own money, which would be nigh impossible to distinguish from honey from the mint... This is another piece of economical nightmare fuel.

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    $\begingroup$ I don't see centralised manufacture as being an inherent trait of 'money'. Gold, cowrie shells, cattle, could all be printed non-centrally and yet have all found use as money. $\endgroup$
    – Ligament
    Commented Aug 20, 2021 at 17:06
  • $\begingroup$ @Ligament cattle and shells don't have the problems I listed above. Sure, cattle dies, but they also reproduce at a very predictable and controllable rate. $\endgroup$
    – The Square-Cube Law
    Commented Aug 20, 2021 at 19:04
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    $\begingroup$ not stalking, lol. Honey also does not get out of thin air, in essence it equivalent to edible oil or biodisel in modern day therms. It energy stored in hydrocarbon form. And it was part of regular barter exchanges in old days. It sure not a fiat money, so it is not a gold as well, but precisely because of that there is no worries of too much honey in a system, if it too much gold it bad for price of gold, but too much honey means more steam turbines doing useful work, producing more energy, produced goods become cheaper - it a great thing, lol $\endgroup$
    – MolbOrg
    Commented Aug 20, 2021 at 21:13
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    $\begingroup$ @Ligament for authenticity i think they are referring to the fact it is actually honey and not say pine oil, there are lots of natural products that look like honey. $\endgroup$
    – John
    Commented Aug 21, 2021 at 23:08
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    $\begingroup$ There is always a relevant XKCD $\endgroup$
    – trent
    Commented Aug 22, 2021 at 13:54
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You've missed an important attribute - uselessness. It's not often discussed in economic explanations of currency, but it's important. One of gold's attractions is/was that, other than adornment, gold is pretty useless (at least, it was before electronic connectors became a thing).

Immediately after WWII, cigarettes were often used as temporary currency. As you might expect, this didn't last, since the currency literally went up in smoke.

Honey is mighty tasty, so its lack of utility is not what might be desired.

Another issue is rarity. The basis for a currency needs a certain balance. It has to be rare enough to be "valuable", but not so rare that nobody can find any. Honey is, or can be, commonplace. Worse, it can reliably be farmed, sort of like Bitcoin today.

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  • $\begingroup$ And why should uselessness be a requirement? Prisoners at times have used cigarettes as currency, which can be smoked. Gold as you mention was always useful for decorative items. In fact, it's helpful if a currency has some initial value before it is used as a currency - because it gives the first few traders more of an incentive to accept it in barter. $\endgroup$
    – causative
    Commented Aug 20, 2021 at 21:31
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    $\begingroup$ @causative - It is inherently deflationary. Eventually, all the currency disappears. Non-existent currency is not particularly useful. $\endgroup$
    – WhatRoughBeast
    Commented Aug 20, 2021 at 21:37
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    $\begingroup$ Same with cigarettes. Actually I'd be more worried about inflation than deflation; if honey becomes used as a main currency, people will produce more than can be eaten, driving the value down. $\endgroup$
    – causative
    Commented Aug 20, 2021 at 21:44
  • $\begingroup$ @causative - You are confusing the two issues I raised. Utility - honey can be consumed. Rarity - honey can be farmed. Either way, unless a careful balance is maintained, honey makes for a bad base for currency. $\endgroup$
    – WhatRoughBeast
    Commented Aug 21, 2021 at 4:45
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    $\begingroup$ Actually, gold was very useful, as it was the first metal that pre industrial humans could work with, due to its malleability. And it was easy to get gold granules (how it was usually found) and turn that into a block to work with by melting it in a fire - gold has a low melting point. $\endgroup$
    – tj1000
    Commented Aug 21, 2021 at 16:22
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Before the invention of modern bee hives, harvesting honey killed the bees.

So, before the modern box-shaped bee hive was invented, the only way to harvest honey was to smash open naturally-formed bee hives and take the honey that way. Naturally, this tended to kill the bees that lived in the hive, since they no longer had anywhere to live, reproduce, or protect themselves from predators. As a result, farming honey was much more difficult and expensive than it now is, which would make honey as a unit of currency much more difficult to produce.

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    $\begingroup$ The logical conclusion is that if you use honey as money, and you can't harvest it without killing bees, then people will drive bees extinct because it's in their own individual interest to harvest as much of it as they can for themselves. $\endgroup$
    – kaya3
    Commented Aug 22, 2021 at 13:41
  • $\begingroup$ @kaya3 if honey is the currency, and it can no longer be produced, but might still be consumed, and spread over a larger population, the deflation would be massive. None the less, that doesn't mean it couldn't be a currency - it just means that the value of it would change - like all currencies. $\endgroup$
    – UKMonkey
    Commented Sep 25, 2021 at 14:19
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Honey is not-uniform

There are many varieties of honey. Honey is also blended for many different purposes.

Honey can be (and frequently is) adulterated. Honey is very similar chemically to high-fructose corn syrup, which is often used as an adulterant.

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  • $\begingroup$ In the US, honey is permitted to be diluted with sugar water up to 10%. Part of the reason is that bee keepers provide sugar water to the hives to help them survive the winter. I can tell when sugar water has been added. Honey and high-fructose corn syrup both have small amounts of other chemicals. Those other chemicals are different between the two and can be used to identify when the honey is adulterated. $\endgroup$
    – David R
    Commented Aug 21, 2021 at 14:32
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Currency also needs to be easily transferable from person to person. You can't just pass someone one goldsworth of honey - either everyone has their own container and you move honey from your container to mine (but then how do we measure it and confirm it is the right amount) or we pass around little jars with premeasured amounts of honey - but those are breakable. And how are you sure that that isn't a jar with a false bottom or thicker walls that actually contains less honey than usual?

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