Fall in the Bay Area might lack changing leaves or first frost, but one autumnal tradition endures: the swell of sweets. We start with Halloween candy, head toward Thanksgiving pie in November, surround ourselves with sugar cookies and candy canes in December, and finally arrive, bloated and toothless, at New Year’s remorse.

But sugar has been increasingly vilified by the scientific community. For those looking to celebrate the season with impunity, it may be necessary to go back to an old-fashioned sweetener—honey— which has become increasingly popular among urban homesteaders.

The bad news about sugar has come from a number of sources, including UCSF professor Robert Lustig, whose lecture “Sugar: The Bitter Truth” has been viewed on YouTube more that 1.7 million times in the past two years. Lustig’s argument, in brief, is that sugar is composed of glucose and fructose, which are not digested the same way —he believes that fructose is a poison that damages the liver, disrupts insulin regulation, and leads to excessive fat. Ultimately, from Lustig’s point of view, sugar and high-fructose corn syrup are to blame for America’s epidemic rates of obesity.

Meanwhile, other scientists have been investigating the source of our attraction to sweets, and discovered specialized sensors in our intestines that literally taste glucose to help us regulate our appetites. Our bodies can derive glucose from a wide range of foods, from carbohydrates to dairy, but there’s something about the taste of sweetness that calls to us. It seems like we are hardwired to want dessert.

So, what are we supposed to do? We really, really like glucose, from our tongues to our intestines, but sugar is ruining our health.

Honey lets us have it both ways. For some reason, our bodies seem to process the fructose in honey with fewer health problems. Honey fructose has a less harmful effect on triglyceride levels, inflammation, and oxidative stress. And in fact, honey is the original sweetener—the earliest records of honey go back to cuneiform texts from 2100 B.C., whereas sugar was first crystallized around 500 A.D. in India, and not brought to Europe until the Crusades. Honeybees were brought to the Americas by the earliest European settlers, so you might see those honey-producing colonies as a sweeter version of colonialism than the sugar plantations that ran on slave labor.

Sugar may have reigned supreme for the last several centuries, but honey is making a comeback, particularly in the Bay Area. The history of local honey is relatively short, given that honeybees were first introduced to California in 1853, but since then, the Bay Area climate has proven conducive to apiculture, or beekeeping.

Hence the rise of a new kind of locavore: the urban beekeeper. Thanks to the “multifloral” nature of honeybees, who will pollinate whatever flowers they encounter, the taste of their honey will vary according to their environment. Urban beekeepers in San Francisco have discovered that the taste of honey will differ according to neighborhood, reflecting the foliage that thrives in each microclimate.

Some beekeeping is very urban indeed. The San Francisco Bee Cause keeps its hives at the Hayes Valley Farm, which was built last year on the former Fell Street off-ramp of the Central Freeway. The bees pollinate the farm’s squash, melon, fava beans, and sunflowers—or any flowers—and the SFBC uses the honey as a fundraiser to help raise awareness of bees.

Bee Cause founder Karen Peteros points out that San Francisco is unique in America because it is the only major city in which beekeeping is unregulated. While New York City, for example, only recently lifted a ban on beekeeping in March 2010, it continues to require beekeepers to register with the city.

Local beekeepers do, though, have a responsibility to regulate themselves, so the Bee Cause will offer a class next month for first-time beekeepers, covering health and safety, costs, and best practices. The idea is to prepare novice beekeepers now, while the queen is starting to slow down, so that everyone will be ready to go in the spring.

And thanks to the temperate Northern California climate, even during the winter, you can stock up on local honey.

The folks from Marshall’s Farm Honey, in Napa County, travel to farmer’s markets all around the Bay Area. On Saturdays, they set up their stand outside San Francisco’s Ferry Building, where they sell honey in jars, as flavored straws, or pure honeycomb. They suggest eating honeycomb as an accompaniment to cheese, and they sell a lot to Cowgirl Creamery Sidekick, right inside the Ferry Building, as well as fine-dining restaurants in San Francisco, like Michael Mina and Boulevard.

A small shop in the Mission District, Her Majesty’s Secret Beekeeper, sells both honey and urban beekeeping supplies. The owner, Bryon Waibel, is passionate about the medicinal, nutritional, and even spiritual value of honey. “I hate honey bears,” he said, because they’ve led to a misconception that crystallized honey has gone bad.

In fact, honey is delicious in all its forms. But will the trick-or-treaters accept a chunk of honeycomb on Monday? Just tell them about glucose and see what happens.

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Active Ingredient Recipe

At Contigo , in Noe Valley, pastry chef Marylou Jaso serves an upside down cake made with honey and fresh figs from Knoll Valley Farm, but this recipe features orange juice and a little kick of whiskey. It sounds like it could also be a great cocktail.

3½ cups flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon salt

4 teaspoons cinnamon

2 teaspoons cardamom

1 cup vegetable oil

1½ cups honey

1 cup sugar

½ cup brown sugar

3 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 cup brewed coffee or tea

½ cup orange juice

¼ cup whiskey

Combine dry ingredients and wet ingredients separately, then whisk together. Pour into a greased 13 x 9 inch pan (or two round 9 inch pans). Bake at 350 degrees for 40-50 minutes, until cake springs back when pressed. Drizzle with more honey before serving.

Correction: In an earlier version of the story, we incorrectly stated that honey does not have fructose, which it does. The story has been revised to state that honey fructose, though, seems to be processed differently than normal fructose. (So keep eating honey!)