Thanks for all the helpful comments chaps. I think I just assumed I should boil it for sterilization reasons. The beer is a heavily spiced ginger beer so I wanted a little honey flavour to take the edge off the fieriness. Boiling the honey in water also allowed me to infuse some more ginger...

I read somewhere (probably on the internet, where everything is true) that yeast will typically try to process the easiest sugars first and so to get the best taste out of honey, you should add it a few days into the ferment once the yeast has had a good go at the malt. This way it will retain...