The viscosity of honey generally decreases with the increase in the temperature. The effect of temperature on rheological properties also needs to be documented because a wide variation in temperature is encountered during processing and storage of liquid foods. The flow behavior properties as indicated by rheological profiling provides an indirect measure of product consistency and quality, which is the guiding factor for the design of mechanics of honey processing. This property is of great practical importance to beekeepers and honey processors as the knowledge of honey rheology is necessary in the area of process engineering that involves different stages including handling, storage, processing, quality control, and transportation. Viscosity affects sensorial properties of honeys and so the acceptability of consumers. From rheological point of view, honey is a material with changing molecular structure and honey viscosity affects the interactions with and within the microenvironment, material transport, and also the consumption experience. Viscosity is an important quality attribute of honey and there are various physical as well as biochemical factors such as temperature, moisture content, and presence of crystals, colloids, and sugars that influence this property.

Honey is a natural viscous food well known for its high nutritional and prophylactic values. Color, flavor, texture, and nutritive value are other parameters determining the acceptability criteria of any food. Rheological property is one of the most important physical attributes that could affect texture, sensory rating as well as other quality parameters including shelf stability during storage. Radiation treatment which is useful for ensuring microbial safety of honey does not alter these properties. The results provide information about some key physical properties of commercial Indian honey. The glass transition temperatures ( T g) of these honey analyzed by differential scanning calorimetry varied from −44.1 to −54.1☌ and remained unchanged upon gamma radiation treatment. The effect of gamma radiation (5–15 kGy) on rheological properties of honey was assessed, and it was found to remain unchanged upon radiation treatment. Honey is known to contain pathogenic microbial spores and in our earlier study gamma radiation was found to be effective in achieving microbial decontamination of honey. However, shear rate was not found to alter the viscosity of honey indicating their Newtonian character and the shear stress varied linearly with shear rate for all honey samples. Viscosity of all the honey samples belonging to different commercial brands was found to decrease with increase in temperature (5–40☌) and their sensitivity towards temperature varied significantly as explained by calculating activation energy based on Arrhenius model and ranged from 54.0 to 89.0 kJ/mol. When looks, taste, thickness etc stay same each time in commercial honey, it is far from what raw, natural honey would be.Honey brands commonly available in Indian market were characterized for their rheological and thermal properties. So when Honey travels from the farms to the middlemen to one factory for processing and then another factory for packaging and by the time it reaches the stores all that is left are glucose and fructose plus added preservatives and stabilizers. Honey is made up of more than 70% sugars, less than 20% water and trace minerals. This makes it easy to filter, handle and package and gives the liquid a cleaner and smoother finish but a lot of it natural goodness is lost in the process. Many of the beautiful, golden bottles sitting on supermarket shelves contain commercial honey that has been pasteurized (heated at about 70 degree Celsius followed by rapid cooling).

In Processed honey, almost all its enzymes, antioxidants and minerals are destroyed on being treated with heat and more often, replaced with synthetic material to undertake mass production and give it a shelf life. In its pure form, raw honey contains all the enzymes, antioxidants and minerals.

Viscosity of honey depends upon