Honey has been a prized food since ancient times. A complex blend of sugars, mostly fructose and glucose, and small amounts of other sugars, proteins, amino acids, vitamins and minerals, honey is a $8.94 billion market, and its popularity continues to grow. But over the last decade, honeybees (Apis mellifera) have been hindered from making this natural product by disappearing grassland, herbicides and climate change, and as a result, production has been declining. Now Rotterdam, the Netherlands-based company Fooditive thinks it can take the pressure off bee farming by providing an alternative, made in fermenters, that mimics and performs like traditionally made honey.

The company started researching honey when creating a fruit-based sweetener based on peels, the side streams of apple and pear industrial products. Two years later, that feedstock gave rise to bee-free honey.

蜂蜜自古以来就是一种珍贵的食品。蜂蜜是糖类（主要是果糖和葡萄糖）以及少量其他糖类、蛋白质、氨基酸、维生素和矿物质的复杂混合物，市场价值达 89.4 亿美元，而且其受欢迎程度仍在不断增长。但在过去十年中，由于草原消失、除草剂和气候变化，蜜蜂（Apis mellifera）无法生产这种天然产品，因此产量一直在下降。现在，总部位于荷兰鹿特丹的 Fooditive 公司认为，它可以通过提供一种用发酵罐制造的替代品来减轻养蜂业的压力，这种替代品模仿传统蜂蜜，其性能与传统蜂蜜相似。

该公司在以果皮（苹果和梨工业产品的副产品）为基础生产水果甜味剂时开始研究蜂蜜。两年后，这种原料生产出了不含蜜蜂的蜂蜜。