Before antibiotics and antiseptics, healers across ancient Egypt, Greece, and China reached for honey to treat wounds. Archaeological evidence shows humans have been harvesting and collecting honey for thousands of years – and for much of that time, we understood it to be more than just food.

Today, honey sits in most kitchen cupboards as a perfectly ordinary pantry staple. But honey has never entirely shed its medicinal reputation. And modern research shows us why: it possesses genuine antimicrobial properties, capable of killing or inhibiting a wide range of bacteria, including drug-resistant strains.

This matters now more than ever. Antimicrobial resistance – where bacteria evolve to survive drugs designed to kill them – is one of the defining public health crises of our time. Infections caused by these resistant microbes are becoming harder and more expensive to treat, creating an urgent need for alternative therapies.

Our new study, published in the journal MicrobiologyOpen, shows honeys from Australia’s native flora might be a big part of the solution.

We analysed 56 honey samples collected from more than 35 apiaries across New South........

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