First, I'm not sure where to find my MineCraft version so the above choice may be wrong. I have the latest rev as of 1/8/2020.

If you create a honey block using 4 bottles of honey, you get 1 honey block and 4 empty bottles back. If you do the same with 8, 12, or 16 bottles, and shift-click to place them into your inventory quickly, you only get 4 bottles back total.