Both of those products are pretty thick/sticky by themselves but together create something that behaves much more ‘watery’.
In: Chemistry
Firstly, honey, sauces, and most sticky liquids are “thixotropic” – stirring them makes them easier to stir. This will be part of the reason the mix becomes more watery.
As an educated guess, I think the honey is probably also getting mechanically dispersed in the bbq sauce and forming something akin to a colloid. To picture this, imagine that you mix honey with a lot of sand. Eventually the honey is just a bunch of discrete sticky droplets, all coated in sand and rolling freely over one another. (Also note that when particles in a system are the same shape, I recall the system is more viscous than when their sizes are more varied. The overall mixture of “sand” and “honey” might end up less viscous than either individually.)
Now, imagine molecules of liquid surrounding the honey in place of the sand – that’s a colloid.
I’ve also definitely seen a demo of two viscous polymers mixing together to form a thin solution, but I don’t believe the interactions involved have jack shit to do with this and i cannot find any source on it. I am so sorry to give such vague information
Finally I would also like to note that there should not be a chemical reaction occuring to dehydrate either of them. I’d really like to hear what kind of reactions are being proposed. Edit: For sure, though, sounds like vinegar+sugar has an impact. edit2: oh, okay, sounds like it might not? A mystery lmao
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