HoneyHQ

Dandelion honey

Sharp, pungent and unmistakably strong for a spring honey — a chamomile-and-hay aroma with an animal note behind it that fades as the honey ages.

MonofloralPronouncedFloralHerbaceousAnimal and barnyard

A deep yellow, strongly flavoured spring honey that divides opinion more sharply than its humble source suggests. Dandelion honey is pungent, sharp and faintly barnyard, sets rock-hard within weeks, and is rarely sold commercially because the flow comes at a point in the year when colonies use most of it themselves. It should not be confused with the flower syrup sold under the same name, which contains no honey and is made by boiling dandelion heads with sugar.

Flavour and aroma

Aroma
chamomile, warm hay, a barnyard note when fresh, faint ammonia
Flavour
sharp floral, hay, a bitter herbal edge, strong sweetness underneath
Finish
Assertive and slightly bitter, longer than expected.
Intensity
Pronounced
Sweetness
Sweet
Bitterness
Trace
Acidity
Moderate

Colour, texture and crystallisation

Colour
Light amber (50-85 mm Pfund)Amber (85-114 mm Pfund)

Vivid deep yellow, noticeably more saturated than most honeys of similar Pfund grade — the colour is the first thing people comment on.

On setting: Sets to a hard, bright yellow-cream, keeping much of the colour.

Texture
Crystallised; Soft set; Thick but pourable
Crystallisation

Very fast — can set in the comb before it is extracted

Very high glucose, comparable to oilseed rape, and it sets within weeks — often within days of extraction. Unlike rapeseed the crystals tend to be coarse rather than fine, so the set can be noticeably grainy unless it is deliberately creamed.

Typical composition

Moisture
15–19% (typically 17%)
Fructose
34–39% (typically 36.5%)
Glucose
36–42% (typically 39%)
Glucose-to-fructose ratio
0.98–1.18 (typically 1.07)
pH
3.7–4.5 (typically 4.1)
Electrical conductivity
0.2–0.6 mS/cm (typically 0.35 mS/cm)

These are typical ranges assembled across published work, not measurements of a specific honey.

What these mean: the sugars and the ratio · moisture · conductivity · how each is measured

Where it comes from

Floral source
Taraxacum officinale in the broad sense — an aggregate of hundreds of largely apomictic microspecies, which is a taxonomic mess with no practical consequence for the honey.
Origins
Poland, the Baltic states, alpine Austria and Switzerland, and upland Britain. Rarely a named product in North America despite abundant dandelion.
Origin pages

Resolved from both directions — origins this honey names, and origins that name it.

Harvest
April to May (northern hemisphere)

One of the first flows of the year. In much of Europe it arrives while colonies are still expanding, so it is consumed rather than stored as surplus.

The bees
Dandelion is an important early pollen source as well as a nectar one, arriving exactly when colonies need protein to raise brood. That timing is why the common advice to leave dandelions uncut in April does real work, even though the honey itself rarely reaches a jar.
What counts as monofloral
No official threshold. A genuinely monofloral dandelion honey is uncommon outside grassland regions with an early flush and little competing bloom, such as parts of the Alps, Poland and the Baltic states.
Usual processing
Spun (centrifugally extracted), Creamed (seeded and controlled-set), Pressed, Raw

Extraction has to be prompt for the same reason as rapeseed — a week's delay can leave the honey set solid in the frames. Many beekeepers simply leave the dandelion flow for the colony to use as spring build-up.

What to do with it

A spreading and cooking honey rather than a delicate one. Its assertiveness survives baking, which most honeys' does not, and the set texture is good on bread. It is a poor choice for tea.

SpreadingBakingWith cheeseGlazing and roasting

Pairings

  • Rye and pumpernickel

    Both are strong and slightly sour; the honey does not have to be polite.

  • Washed-rind cheeses

    The honey's own barnyard note is in the same family as the rind's, which turns a clash into a continuity.

  • Spiced honey cake

    One of the few honeys whose character is still detectable after an hour in the oven.

Pairing pages this honey appears on

Selected by this honey’s own recorded intensity, flavour families and uses rather than by anything written above — each page prints the rule that put it there.

Where this honey sits in the catalogue

History and traditional use

Dandelion's status as a weed is recent and cultural. It was introduced to North America deliberately as a food and medicinal plant, and the twentieth-century lawn aesthetic turned a useful early forage plant into a target for herbicide — which is the underlying reason a common flower yields an uncommon honey.

  • Used in central and eastern Europe as the first honey of the year, with a spring tonic reputation resting on tradition rather than on trial evidence.

Traditional use records that people have done something, and for how long. It is not evidence that it works.

Sources

  • HoneyHQ editorial synthesis — HEKNO Ltd · HoneyHQ synthesis
  • Field Guide to the Bees of Great Britain and Ireland — Bloomsbury (2015) · Field guide

How sources are selected and weighted is set out in the sources and evidence policy.

Guides that cover this honey

Tools for choosing and using honey

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