Silver fir honey

Flavour and aroma

Aroma

fir resin, malt, damp forest floor, dried fig

Flavour

balsamic resin, caramelised malt, a mineral saltiness, faint liquorice

Finish

Very long, dry and resinous.

Flavour character

• Warm and cooked — malty, caramel
• 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-black with a characteristic green-gold cast when held to the light — the green is the field mark that separates fir from spruce honeydew.

On setting: Rarely sets. Where melezitose is present it can set very hard indeed.

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 in glucose and rich in oligosaccharides that interfere with crystal formation, so it stays liquid for years. The exception is a melezitose-heavy season, when the honey can set solid in the comb before it can be extracted — the cement honey that alpine beekeepers dread.

Typical composition

Moisture

14–18% (typically 16%)

Fructose

30–38% (typically 34%)

Glucose

22–30% (typically 26%)

Glucose-to-fructose ratio

0.65–0.85 (typically 0.76)

pH

4.4–5.6 (typically 5)

Electrical conductivity

1–1.8 mS/cm (typically 1.3 mS/cm)

These are typical ranges assembled across published work, not measurements of a specific honey. Conductivity is high even by honeydew standards, and is the measure regulators use to separate honeydew from blossom honey.

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).

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). 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 silver fir honey.

Where it comes from

Floral source

No flower involved. The sugar begins as phloem sap in silver fir, Abies alba, and passes through specific aphids — chiefly Cinara pectinatae (formerly Buchneria pectinatae) and C. confinis — before bees collect it from the needles and bark.

Origins

The Black Forest and Swabian Alb in Germany, the Vosges and Jura in France, Switzerland, Austria and Slovenia.

Origin pages

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

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

Typical harvest

June to August (northern hemisphere)

Entirely dependent on the aphid population cycle rather than on any flowering. A strong honeydew year happens perhaps twice in five, and cannot be predicted far ahead.

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

The bees

Colonies are moved into the forest when the flow appears, which is often at short notice. The husbandry catch is well known to alpine beekeepers: honeydew honey is poor winter store because its high mineral and oligosaccharide content burdens bees that cannot leave the hive for months, so it must be taken and replaced.

Usual processing

Spun (centrifugally extracted), Coarsely strained, Raw

Schwarzwälder Tannenhonig — Black Forest fir honey — holds a protected designation of origin, which is unusual for a honeydew honey and reflects how specific and how valued the product is.

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.

Every sourced period, on the honey atlas

What to do with it

A cheese-board and breakfast honey in its home regions. Its moderate sweetness makes it usable in quantity where a very sweet honey would cloy.

At the tableSpreadingWith cheeseBakingGlazing and roastingIn hot drinks

Pairings

• Alpine cheeses — Comté, Gruyère, VacherinClassic

  Two products of the same forest and pasture, and a pairing that has existed as long as both have.

• Dark rye and pumpernickelClassic

  Malt against malt, with neither trying to be sweet.

• Strong black coffee

  The honey's resinous bitterness follows the coffee rather than sweetening away from it.

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

Honeydew honey was long regarded across northern Europe as an inferior and difficult product. The Black Forest inverted that judgement in the twentieth century and built a premium around it — a reminder that the ranking of honeys is cultural as much as chemical.