The link below is to a food safety bulletin from the University of Minnesota Extension Service with this information about using honey:

"Sugar aids in gel formation, develops flavor by adding sweetness, and acts as a preservative in jams, marmalades, preserves, and conserves. Corn syrup or honey can replace part of the sugar in these fruit products. Use light colored, mild-flavored honey. If you substitute too much honey, it can overpower the fruit flavor."

Do not reduce the total amount of sugar in a traditional recipe. Too little sugar prevents the preserves from jelling and may allow yeast and mold to grow.

Contact your County Extension Office - Family and Consumer Sciences Agent - for more information. This is especially important when it comes to altering canning recipes and food safety. They have up-to-date information and recipes that are tested for food safety.

As a certified canning instructor, I only suggest using tested recipes from these sources:

-National Center for Home Food Preservation and the USDA Complete Guide to Home Canning, 2009 revision - available on-line:
http://nchfp.uga.edu/publications/usda/2_USDAcanningGuide1_06.pdf
Scroll down to page 30 for information about substituting honey for sugar.

-"So Easy to Preserve", a 375-page book with over 185 tested recipes, along with step by step instructions and in-depth information for both the new and experienced food preserver. Chapters include Preserving Food, Canning, Pickled Products, Jellied Fruit Products, Freezing and Drying produced by the University of Georgia.

-"Ball Blue Book", the only commercial home-canning book that uses the USDA guidelines.

I'm also not sure why you would substitute honey for sugar, especially if you factor in cost -- unless you can get honey cheap or free. There is little nutritional value to be gained.

-Grainlady

Here is a link that might be useful: Making jams, marmalades, preserves, and conserves.

Thanks Grainlady for the very thorough reply, it definitely gave me some good insight. As well as a refresher on some of the rules and regulations.

You ask why I use honey instead of sugar, while it is much more expensive, I do like the taste it gives the jams I have made in the past and when I was initially testing, I found that there was no hint of honey taste unless I completely replaced the sugar with honey (having both honey and sugar made the jams too sweat). Also, I found that, generally, the sugars in honey, combined with the sugars in the fruit I use was enough to preserve the jam.

Thanks again!