Signs or indications

Liquid in beeswax cells that may drip when comb held horizontal. Cells adjacent to brood area cappedcapping:
the covering that bees add over comb cells containing fully ripened honey or to cap brood that has reached the pupal stage; bee bread cells are not capped
, liquid honey inside.

Description

Honey is a concentrated sugar solution of two simple sugars, glucose (dextrose) and fructose (levulose). Honey is collected as nectar, a sugary plant secretion from flowers or extra-floral nectaries of flowering plants. Different nectars have characteristic floral flavor, color and sweetness characteristics. Nectar is high in moisture content.

Additional sugar sources, such as sugary sap from plants (cut sugar cane stalks for example) or refined cane/beet sugar syrup fed to colonies by beekeepers are also converted into honey by bees. Sugar water honey from refined sugars is less aromatic and lacking in plant compounds. Honey, by definition, only comes from honey bees.

Foraging bees may additionally collect honey dew, a term for the excretions of plant sucking insects like scale insects, aphids and spotted lanternflies. This is termed pine honey or forest honey.

On rare occassions it is possible to observe unusual color of ripening nectar/ripened honey in cells. Collection of syrupy materials such as syrups from maple, candy manufacturers (M&M factories for example) or Merishno cherry packing facilities might yield green, red or other colored nectar/honey. 

Bees sticking their head in cells outside the brood area are likely processing nectar into honey. The bees expose droplets of nectar at their mouthparts as a bubble, sucking the droplet into and producing a new bubble outside to hasten ripening. They will put droplets of ripening honey in cells, to expose more surface to the warm ripening temeratures at the top of their hive and then consolidate the droplets eventually completely filling a cell and putting a wax cappingcapping:
the covering that bees add over comb cells containing fully ripened honey or to cap brood that has reached the pupal stage; bee bread cells are not capped
over it when fully processed.

Both a physical and a chemical change occur in conversion of nectar to honey. To change nectar into honey, the bees (1) convert the nectar sugars to the two principal sugars of honey and (2) evaporate a majority of the water from the nectar. All of this is done in beeswax combs of the bee hive. Ripening nectar may be called ripening nectar, unripe honey or ripening honey.

When fully processed, the individual beeswax cells of honey are covered with a beeswax cappingcapping:
the covering that bees add over comb cells containing fully ripened honey or to cap brood that has reached the pupal stage; bee bread cells are not capped
(capped honey cell). Prior to full ripening, the ripening nectar may drip out of their cells if the comb is held vertical.

 To process honey the wax covering needs to be removed (uncappinguncapping:
the process of prematurely removing the capping from pupal cells; usually associated with hygienic bees looking for mites reproducing on pupae
honey cells) or the comb crushed and honey drained from the wax. In their hive bees uncap the cells and cappings drop to the bottom of the hive – they may accumulate over the winter period on the bottom board of the hive until house cleaning bees remove them to discard outside the hive. Beekeepers might clean the bottom board in early spring to help bees keep a sanitary hive bottom board.

Most closely resembles

worker capped brood, fermenting honey

Resources

Caron, Dewey M. and Clarence J Connor. 2022. Honey Bee Biolgy & Beekeeping Wicwas Press. Edition 2 Chapter 17, 3rd edition Chapter 18.

Benson, Emily 2016. Bees collect honeydew from bugs before spring blossoms arrive. New Scientist.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2111104-bees-collect-honeydew-from-bugs-before-spring-blossoms-arrive/#ixzz7Eyo6jpCF

Nuwer, Rachel. 2012. French Bees Are Making M&M-Contaminated Blue and Green Honey. Smithsonian Mag. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/french-bees-are-making-mm-contaminated-blue-and-green-honey-63756956/

https://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/30/nyregion/30bigcity.html