Forest honeydew honey

Flavour and aroma

Aroma

pine resin, damp forest floor, malt, dried fig, woodsmoke

Flavour

resin, caramelised malt, dried fruit, a distinct salty-mineral note

Finish

Long, resinous and savoury.

Flavour character

• Warm and cooked — malty, molasses and treacle, nutty
• Woody and resinous — resinous, woody
• Earthy and mineral — mineral and saline

Colour, texture and crystallisation

Colour

1. Water white0–8 mm
2. Extra white8–17 mm
3. White17–34 mm
4. Extra light amber34–50 mm
5. Light amber50–85 mm
6. Amber85–114 mm — this honey
7. Dark amber114+ mm — this honey

Very dark brown, often with a distinct greenish or blackish cast; fir honeydew can look almost black with green highlights.

Texture

Thick but pourable; Runny

Crystallisation

Very slow, step 1 of 5, from very slow to very fast

Very slow — often still liquid after a year or more; sets with a coarse crystal.

Low glucose relative to fructose, plus a substantial fraction of higher sugars — melezitose, erlose and other oligosaccharides that nectar honeys largely lack — which interfere with crystal formation. The exception is honeydew rich in melezitose, which can set hard in the comb so rapidly that beekeepers call it cement honey and cannot extract it at all.

Typical composition

Moisture

15–19% (typically 16.5%)

Fructose

31–38% (typically 34%)

Glucose

24–31% (typically 27%)

Glucose-to-fructose ratio

0.7–0.9 (typically 0.79)

pH

4.5–6.1 (typically 5.2)

Electrical conductivity

0.8–2.2 mS/cm (typically 1.3 mS/cm)

These are typical ranges assembled across published work, not measurements of a specific honey. Electrical conductivity above 0.8 mS/cm is the formal criterion separating honeydew honey from floral honey in both the Codex standard and the EU directive. It is a proxy for mineral content, which is what makes honeydew honey taste the way it does.

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

The insects behind it

Honeydew honey has three parties: the tree whose sap is the raw material, the sap-feeding insect that excretes the surplus as honeydew, and the bee that collects it. These are the insects documented for this honey, and how each link is known.

• Cinara pectinatae — large silver fir aphid

  Aphid (Aphididae (Lachninae)) on silver fir · Germany · Honeydew analysed

  Formerly Buchneria pectinatae.

  Its honeydew is 2% melezitose, 15% erlose and 51% sucrose by share of sugars (means).

  Almost no melezitose, so fir honeydew from this aphid does not set in the comb the way melezitose-rich spruce honeydew can.

• Cinara confinis

  Aphid (Aphididae (Lachninae)) on silver fir · Germany · Honeydew analysed

  Its honeydew is 2% melezitose, 14% erlose and 24% sucrose by share of sugars (means).

• Cinara piceae — black spruce aphid

  Aphid (Aphididae (Lachninae)) on norway spruce · Germany · Honeydew analysed

  Its honeydew is 48% melezitose, 1% erlose and 11% sucrose by share of sugars (means).

  The most melezitose-rich honeydew measured — nearly half its sugar. This is the insect behind 'cement honey' that crystallises in the comb.

• Cinara pilicornis

  Aphid (Aphididae (Lachninae)) on norway spruce · Germany · Honeydew analysed

  Its honeydew is 36% melezitose, 1% erlose and 30% sucrose by share of sugars (means).

• Physokermes piceae — spruce bud scale

  Soft scale insect (Coccidae) on norway spruce · Germany · Honeydew analysed

  Its honeydew is 13% melezitose, 7% erlose and 35% sucrose by share of sugars (means).

• Physokermes hemicryphus

  Soft scale insect (Coccidae) on norway spruce · Germany · Honeydew analysed

  Its honeydew is 2% melezitose, 9% erlose and 48% sucrose by share of sugars (means).

• Marchalina hellenica — giant pine scale

  Giant scale insect (Marchalinidae) on calabrian and aleppo pines · Greece, Türkiye · Found in a field survey

  Greek entomologists report pine honey as about 60% of Greece's annual honey production and honeydew honey overall as about 70%. They describe pine honey as produced only in Greece and Türkiye.

Checked 2026-09-29 against: Sugar, amino acid and inorganic ion profiling of the honeydew from different hemipteran species feeding on Abies alba and Picea abies (2020); The effect of cold periods on the biological cycle of Marchalina hellenica (2022); Honeydew producing insects in some forests of Turkey and their potential to produce of honeydew honey (2020); Main European unifloral honeys: descriptive sheets (2004). Where honeydew comes from.

What laboratories and tasting panels measured

Protected versions and what they require

2 protected names sell this honey type under a registered specification. Each sets limits a jar must meet to carry the name — they describe that protected honey, not every forest honeydew honey.

Where it comes from

Floral source

No floral source. The sugar comes from sap-feeding insects on silver fir, spruce, pine and oak. Greek pine honey depends on a single scale insect, Marchalina hellenica, on Pinus brutia — a three-way relationship between a tree, an insect and a bee.

Origins

Germany (the Black Forest), Austria, Switzerland, Greece (which produces a large share of the world's pine honey), Turkey, Italy, Spain, Slovenia and the Czech Republic.

Origin pages

• Greece
• The Black Forest
• Germany
• Austria
• Switzerland
• Slovenia
• The Alps

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

Typical harvest

June to September (northern hemisphere)

Wholly dependent on the aphid population, which varies enormously year to year. A honeydew flow can fail completely for several seasons and then be exceptional.

A typical window for the honey type, HoneyHQ synthesis — not a calendar for any one place.

The bees

Bees collect honeydew from surfaces rather than from flowers, which means this honey involves no pollination at all — the clearest case on the site of honey and pollination being separable. Honeydew is also harder on colonies overwintering on it: its higher mineral and oligosaccharide content is less digestible, and beekeepers in honeydew regions often remove it before winter.

Usual processing

Spun (centrifugally extracted), Coarsely strained

Sold under regional names — Tannenhonig for silver fir, Waldhonig for mixed forest, pine honey in Greece and Turkey — that describe the tree rather than any flower.

Sourced periods for this honey

Read from a source for the place named, and kept apart from the typical windows elsewhere on HoneyHQ, which are synthesis. Flowering, nectar flow and harvest are different periods.

• Honeydew flow: Large silver fir aphid on silver fir — May–July

  Baden-Württemberg (sampled stands), Germany · northern hemisphere · Months as stated · Peer-reviewed study

  May to July in the sampled years.

  Honeydew follows the insects' populations, which rise and crash from year to year; a forest can yield nothing in a poor year.

  Source: Sugar, amino acid and inorganic ion profiling of the honeydew from different hemipteran species feeding on Abies alba and Picea abies. Checked 2026-10-31.

• Honeydew flow: Black spruce aphid on Norway spruce — May–July

  Baden-Württemberg (sampled stands), Germany · northern hemisphere · Months as stated · Peer-reviewed study

  May to July in the sampled years.

  Honeydew follows the insects' populations, which rise and crash from year to year; a forest can yield nothing in a poor year.

  Source: Sugar, amino acid and inorganic ion profiling of the honeydew from different hemipteran species feeding on Abies alba and Picea abies. Checked 2026-10-31.

• Honeydew flow: Spruce bud scale on Norway spruce — May–July

  Baden-Württemberg (sampled stands), Germany · northern hemisphere · Months as stated · Peer-reviewed study

  May to July in the sampled years.

  Honeydew follows the insects' populations, which rise and crash from year to year; a forest can yield nothing in a poor year.

  Source: Sugar, amino acid and inorganic ion profiling of the honeydew from different hemipteran species feeding on Abies alba and Picea abies. Checked 2026-10-31.

• Honeydew flow: Giant pine scale on Calabrian and Aleppo pines — March–April

  Greece · northern hemisphere · Months as stated · Peer-reviewed study

  The insect's heaviest honeydew production is in March and April.

  The heaviest production, not the only one: beekeepers work pine forests at other times of year too.

  Source: The effect of cold periods on the biological cycle of Marchalina hellenica. Checked 2026-10-31.

Every sourced period, on the honey atlas

What to do with it

Its lower sweetness makes it unusually useful in savoury cooking, and its resinous depth survives heat. A good honey for a cheeseboard and for glazing pork or game.

At the tableSpreadingWith cheeseIn hot drinksGlazing and roastingMarinades

Pairings

• Alpine cheeses — comté, gruyère, appenzellerClassic

  Nutty, mineral cheeses from the same mountains. The pairing is regional and also genuinely well matched.

• Dark rye bread

  Sourness and malt on the bread's side; resin and mineral on the honey's.

• Game and pork glazes

  Low sweetness means it deepens a glaze instead of turning it into a dessert.

• Black tea

  Enough weight to be tasted through a strong assam, which a floral honey is not.

Similar honeys and substitutes

Three different questions with different answers: a honey that tastes alike can behave differently in a recipe, and the same set texture says nothing about flavour. Each list is chosen from the recorded fields that matter to its question — and, where tasting panels or specifications described both honeys, the terms they share — and every suggestion says which, and what will be different. Compare it side by side or build a tasting flight.

History and traditional use

• A staple honey of central European alpine regions, where floral flows are short and forest honeydew is reliable in good years.

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