Logwood honey
Light and clean with a distinct floral sweetness and a faint caramelised note — one of the more delicate Caribbean honeys.
Jamaica's principal honey, from logwood, a Central American tree introduced to the island for dye and now naturalised across the dry limestone country. The dye trade that brought it collapsed with the arrival of synthetic dyes in the nineteenth century, leaving the trees behind and a honey industry built on their nectar.
Flavour and aroma
- Aroma
- light florals, warm hay, faint caramel
- Flavour
- soft floral, light caramel, clean sweetness
- Finish
- Medium and clean.
- Intensity
- Mild
- Sweetness
- Sweet
- Bitterness
- None
- Acidity
- Moderate
Colour, texture and crystallisation
- Colour
- Extra light amber (34-50 mm Pfund)Light amber (50-85 mm Pfund)
Pale gold, clear and bright — which surprises people expecting a honey named for a dye tree to be dark.
On setting: Sets to a fine pale cream.
- Texture
- Runny; Soft set; Thick but pourable
- Crystallisation
Moderate — granulates over a few months
A moderate fine set.
Typical composition
- Moisture
- 16–20% (typically 18%)
- Fructose
- 36–42% (typically 39%)
- Glucose
- 29–35% (typically 32%)
- pH
- 3.5–4.3 (typically 3.9)
- 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
- Haematoxylum campechianum, logwood, a spiny leguminous tree naturalised across Jamaican dry limestone and coastal scrub.
- Origins
- Jamaica principally, and Belize, Mexico and other parts of the Caribbean where logwood was planted.
- Origin pages
Resolved from both directions — origins this honey names, and origins that name it.
- Harvest
- January to April (northern hemisphere)
A dry-season flow, and Jamaica's main crop.
- The bees
- Jamaican beekeeping now works Africanized stock, which spread through the Caribbean from the 1980s. Colonies are managed for it rather than against it.
- Usual processing
- Raw, Coarsely strained, Spun (centrifugally extracted), Filtered
Jamaican honey production is small and largely domestic, with a growing specialty export. Hurricane damage is a recurrent and severe risk.
What to do with it
An everyday honey and the standard Jamaican type.
At the tableSpreadingIn hot drinksBakingGlazing and roasting
Pairings
- Hard dough breadClassic
The local staple.
- Fresh cheeses
Both mild.
- Rum
A Jamaican pairing with the honey supplying sweetness rather than competing flavour.
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
Logwood was the basis of a major Caribbean dye industry from the seventeenth century, valuable enough to be fought over — the settlement of Belize began as a logwood cutters' camp. Synthetic dyes ended the trade and left the trees.
Sources
- HoneyHQ editorial synthesis — HEKNO Ltd · HoneyHQ synthesis
- The World History of Beekeeping and Honey Hunting — Routledge (1999) · Historical text
How sources are selected and weighted is set out in the sources and evidence policy.
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