Was honey ever used as money?
Short answerMostly false
Honey and beeswax were widely used to pay taxes, rents and tribute, which is not the same as being money. Payment in kind of a valued commodity is not a general medium of exchange.
Where the belief comes from
Genuine and abundant records of honey and wax being paid to authority, compressed into 'honey was money' by dropping the distinction between payment in kind and a medium of exchange.
What is well documented
Honey and wax appear as manorial dues and rents in medieval Europe, as tax and tribute in imperial China, as colonial tribute in Mesoamerica after the Spanish conquest, as ecclesiastical obligation across Latin Christendom, and among goods rendered to authority in ancient Egypt. Those are real, administrative, checkable records.
They are also unusually good evidence of value. Nobody demands payment in something worthless, and tax documents were written to be enforced rather than to impress.
Why that is not currency
Money is a general medium of exchange: you can use it to buy anything from anyone. Paying a specified render in honey to a specified landlord is payment in kind, which is what happens when a commodity is valuable and coin is scarce. Grain, cloth, livestock and labour were all rendered the same way and none of them was currency either.
Sources
- The World History of Beekeeping and Honey Hunting — Routledge (1999) · Historical text
- Stingless Bees of Mexico: The Biology, Management and Conservation of an Ancient Heritage — Springer (2018) · Monograph
How sources are selected and weighted is set out in the sources and evidence policy.