Honey has really interesting antimicrobial properties. You can read more about it in Mandal and Mandal (2011) “Honey: its medicinal property and antibacterial activity” from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3609166

Cesar et. al. (2020) “Bacterial Evolution in High-Osmolarity Environments.” from https://mbio.asm.org/content/11/4/e01191-20 looks into how bacteria handle being in environments like honey.