Water white honey
The palest grade there is — near-transparent. Almost always a very mild honey, because colour tracks the trace compounds that carry flavour.
35 honeys · colour
Honeys in this group
- Acacia honeyWater white · DelicateClean, light and sweet with almost nothing in the way. The honey to reach for when you want sweetness without a flavour opinion.
- Rosemary honeyWater white · DelicateDelicate and softly aromatic — floral first, with a thin thread of resin behind it that tells you where it came from.
- Rapeseed honeyWater white · MildVery sweet, very mild, faintly cabbage-like when fresh and cleanly bland once set. Texture is what it has instead of flavour.
- Fireweed honeyWater white · DelicateVery delicate, buttery and faintly tea-like, with a clean finish and almost no aftertaste. A honey that rewards attention and disappears if you are not paying any.
- Borage honeyWater white · DelicateVery light and very clean, with a faint cucumber-fresh note that fades with age. Sweetness without commentary.
- Sage honeyWater white · MildMild, clean and slightly herbal, with a heavy silky body that is more of the experience than the flavour is.
- Sulla honeyWater white · DelicateVery delicate and clean, with a soft almond-and-fresh-grass note and almost no aftertaste.
- Pōhutukawa honeyWater white · MildMild and creamy with a faint salt-and-mineral edge from the coast, and a butterscotch note that emerges as it warms on the tongue.
- Phacelia honeyWater white · MildMild, clean and gently floral with a faint herbal freshness — an easy honey with no rough edges at all.
- Asphodel honeyWater white · DelicateDelicate and softly perfumed with a fresh, almost vegetal lift and a silky weight that gives it more presence than the flavour alone would.
- Lemon blossom honeyWater white · ModerateBright, sharply citrus and clean — lemon zest and blossom rather than the softer neroli of orange blossom, with a genuine acidity behind it.
- Huajillo honeyWater white · DelicateVery delicate and clean with a light floral sweetness and almost no aftertaste — a honey that stays out of the way.
- Vitex honeyWater white · MildVery clean and mild with a light floral sweetness and a faint fresh herbal lift on the finish.
- Milk vetch honeyWater white · MildSoft, mild and slightly floral with a faint green-bean freshness — an unassuming honey made in enormous quantity.
- Rātā honeyWater white · DelicateVery delicate and creamy with a light butterscotch note and a faint mineral saltiness underneath.
- Ethiopian white honeyWater white · MildClean, sweet and faintly herbal, with a smooth dense texture that dominates the impression more than the flavour does.
- Basswood honeyWater white · PronouncedIntensely aromatic with a mentholated, faintly medicinal lift over a clean sweetness — one of the most distinctive American honeys and among the most divisive.
- Ceanothus honeyWater white · MildDelicate and clean with a light floral sweetness and a faint spicy edge — mild, and rather more interesting than a pale honey usually is.
- Blue curls honeyWater white · DelicateExtremely delicate with a clean sweetness and a faint herbal lift — one of the mildest honeys there is, and prized for exactly that.
- Catclaw honeyWater white · MildDelicate and floral with a light sweetness and a faint spicy warmth — one of the gentler American varietals and quite distinct from the darker mesquite honey of the same country.
- Dzidzilché honeyWater white · MildDelicate and clean with a distinct light floral perfume and a faint citrus lift — refined in a way that most tropical honeys are not.
- Kiawe honeyWater white · DelicateVery mild, clean and faintly vanilla-like, with a texture that does most of the work — smooth, buttery and dissolving rather than sticky.
- Ohia lehua honeyWater white · DelicateDelicate and clean with a distinct fresh-butter quality and a light floral lift — one of the mildest honeys with genuine character rather than none.
- Bashkir linden honeyWater white · PronouncedIntensely aromatic with the mentholated, faintly medicinal lift characteristic of lime, over a clean sweetness — more perfumed than most people expect from so pale a honey.
- Alcarria honeyWater white · ModerateDelicate and aromatic, with a clean herbal sweetness — the rosemary type is softer and more floral, the lavender type more perfumed and slightly camphoraceous.
- Dalmatian sage honeyWater white · MildDelicate and clean with a faintly medicinal sage note and a light herbal finish — subtle in a way that rewards eating it plain.
- Tajinaste honeyWater white · DelicateDelicate and clean with a light floral sweetness and a faint mineral edge from the volcanic ground — subtle rather than characterful.
- Narbonne rosemary honeyWater white · DelicateDelicate and clean with a soft herbal floral note and a texture that does much of the work — one of the classic pale European honeys.
- Ak balWater white · MildMild, creamy and delicately floral with a faint herbal lift — the texture is much of the appeal, dense and smooth and dissolving rather than sticky.
- Pear blossom honeyWater white · DelicateVery light and faintly green, with a clean sweetness and almost nothing behind it. Notable chiefly for how hard it is to get.
- Oil-tea camellia honeyWater white · ModeratePale, thin and distinctly bitter, with an astringent tea-like finish. Not a beginner's honey and not really a pleasure honey.
- Soybean honeyWater white · MildVery pale and very mild, with a clean light sweetness and almost nothing to distinguish it. Its virtue is neutrality.
- Milkweed honeyWater white · MildExceptionally perfumed for such a pale honey — a clean floral sweetness with an almost tropical lift. Regarded as a delicacy where it can be produced in quantity.
- Prairie honeyWater white · MildClean, mild and creamy, with a light floral sweetness. The reference point for what a great many people think honey tastes like.
- Towai honeyWater white · MildVery pale and delicate with a faint butterscotch sweetness — noticeably lighter and milder than kamahi from the same genus.
Plants behind these honeys
- ThymeThymus
- RosemarySalvia rosmarinusThe timing is what makes it exceptional rather than the volume. A high-value plant in March is worth far more to bees than a better plant in July, when everything is flowering.
- Black sageSalvia melliferaAn outstanding nectar source in a good year, and the backbone of the chaparral forage sequence.
- MesquiteProsopisA principal desert forage plant, providing both nectar and pollen in landscapes with very few alternatives.
- Oilseed rapeBrassica napusTop-rated for both nectar and pollen, and delivered at exactly the moment colonies are expanding fastest in spring. Its faults are entirely about what comes after.
- SageSalviaVery high nectar and only moderate pollen — sage feeds adult foragers superbly and contributes comparatively little to brood rearing, which is a common pattern in the mint family.
- Chinese milk vetchAstragalus sinicusVery high nectar delivered at vast scale in early spring, and the anchor of migratory beekeeping across southern China.
- LimeTilia cordataExtraordinary nectar productivity concentrated into a very short window. Its urban prevalence makes it disproportionately important to city beekeeping.
Guides covering these honeys
- Why honey crystallisesGranulation is not spoilage, not a sign of adulteration, and not evidence that honey is raw. It is glucose doing what glucose does — and the rate is predictable from the sugar ratio.
- Why honeys taste and look so differentEvery honey is around 80% sugar. Everything that distinguishes one from another lives in the remaining fifth.
- Honey authenticity, adulteration and testingHoney is among the most adulterated foods in world trade. The tests are good, the evasions are better funded, and almost every home test circulating online does not work.
- Raw, filtered and processed honeyWhat actually happens between the hive and the jar, which of it changes the honey, and why the word 'raw' carries less information than it appears to.
- Creamed, set and whipped honeyCreamed honey has nothing added and nothing whipped into it. It is ordinary honey whose crystallisation has been controlled instead of left to chance, and the technique is a hundred years old.
- Why honey comes in different coloursHoney runs from nearly colourless to almost black, and the colour is set mainly by the plant. It correlates loosely with intensity, more strongly with mineral content, and not at all with quality.
Other colour groups
Narrow it down further
- Honey finder
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- Flavour selector
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- Honey comparison
How do these honeys actually differ, beyond colour?
- Honey substitute calculator
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- Storage guide
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