Europe honey

How honey is produced here

Northern and central Europe run on trees and field crops — acacia, lime, rape, buckwheat — with the alpine and montane forests producing the world's most important honeydew honeys. The south runs on aromatic scrub and citrus, with lower moisture and longer, more staggered seasons. Transhumant beekeeping is long established across Spain, France, Italy and Turkey.

Flavour signature

The flavour families that recur across this origin’s honeys, counted from their sensory profiles rather than asserted.

• Floral · 15
• Herbaceous · 10
• Resinous · 9
• Vegetal · 9
• Fruity · 8
• Caramel · 7
• Woody · 5
• Mineral and saline · 5

Honeys from Europe

• 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.
• Linden honeyExtra white · ModerateFresh and cooling — mint, balsam and lime blossom, with a clean herbal sharpness no other pale honey has.
• Chestnut honeyAmber · IntenseAromatic, woody and unmistakably bitter — sweetness first, tannin second, and a long dry finish.
• Heather honeyAmber · IntenseStrong, smoky and slightly bitter, with a lingering woodfire-and-toffee character. One of the most complex honeys produced anywhere.
• Thyme honeyLight amber · PronouncedWarm, herbal and savoury — thyme and dry stone, with a peppery lift and a very long finish.
• Rosemary honeyWater white · DelicateDelicate and softly aromatic — floral first, with a thin thread of resin behind it that tells you where it came from.
• Lavender honeyExtra light amber · PronouncedOvertly perfumed — lavender flower, warm hay and a soft fruity sweetness underneath. Aromatic in a way most honeys are not.
• Orange blossom honeyExtra white · ModerateUnmistakably floral and citrus-scented — orange blossom in the glass, with the fruit itself somewhere behind it.
• Buckwheat honeyDark amber · IntenseMalt, molasses and wet straw, with a savoury, almost animal depth. The most polarising honey in general production.
• Silver fir honeyDark amber · PronouncedMalty, resinous and barely sweet, with a balsamic depth and a long woody finish. One of the least sugary honeys there is.
• 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.
• Strawberry tree honeyAmber · IntenseAggressively bitter — coffee grounds, artichoke and burnt sugar, with the sweetness arriving late and briefly. Nothing in food prepares most people for it.
• Hymettus honeyLight amber · PronouncedIntensely aromatic and herbal, with a warm thyme character, a resinous maquis edge and a long finish that carries a distinct savoury note.
• Corsican maquis honeyExtra light amber · PronouncedRanges from delicate and floral in spring to intensely bitter and resinous in the autumn maquis, which is dominated by strawberry tree and is among the most challenging honeys in Europe.
• 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.
• Vosges fir honeyDark amber · PronouncedBalsamic and malty with a resinous woody depth and a marked lack of sweetness — closer to treacle and pine resin than to anything floral.
• Willow honeyExtra white · MildMild, faintly green and quick to set. A spring honey in the literal sense, and one most beekeepers taste and few buyers ever see.
• Blackthorn honeyExtra white · MildDelicate, almondy and fleeting. Recognisably a Prunus honey, and the closest thing in the European catalogue to the taste of a hedge in March.
• 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.
• Rowan honeyLight amber · ModerateAmber, tart and faintly bitter, with a red-fruit note that echoes the berries the tree is better known for.
• Field maple honeyExtra light amber · ModerateFresh and faintly green with a warm caramel base — a spring honey with rather more body than its colour suggests.
• Plum blossom honeyExtra white · MildLight, sweet and gently almondy, with a soft fruit note behind it. An easy honey and a short-lived one.
• Motherwort honeyExtra light amber · ModerateClean and lightly herbal with a faint bitterness at the end — a summer honey that tastes of the plant rather than of sugar.
• Hyssop honeyExtra light amber · PronouncedOvertly herbal — camphor, mint and warm stone — over a clean gold sweetness. One of the more clearly aromatic herb honeys.
• Ailanthus honeyLight amber · IntenseIntensely aromatic — muscat grape and elderflower with a medicinal edge. It divides opinion more sharply than any other European honey.
• Sea buckthorn honeyLight amber · ModerateSharp and fruity where berry juice has been added, and an ordinary golden coastal honey where it has not. The two are quite different products under one name.
• Hedgerow honeyExtra light amber · ModerateWarm, floral and slightly grassy, with a caramel base. A good hedgerow honey is a genuinely complex thing that happens not to have a Latin name.
• Spring blossom honeyExtra white · MildMild, creamy and clean, with a faint cabbagey note where rape dominates. An easy honey and a spreadable one.
• Carrot seed honeyAmber · PronouncedDark, savoury and faintly medicinal, with a green umbellifer note and a slightly bitter finish. A challenging honey and an interesting one.

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.
• SycamoreAcer pseudoplatanusVery high nectar and good pollen, delivered at tree scale in mid-spring, plus a honeydew contribution later. A single mature sycamore is a serious forage asset.
• Sweet chestnutCastanea sativaAn exceptional pollen source — the catkins shed enormous quantities — and a good nectar source in the right weather. The pollen arrives at a useful moment for colonies building towards late summer.
• HeatherCalluna vulgaris
• LavenderLavandula angustifoliaAn unusually good nectar plant relative to its pollen offering. Bees visiting lavender are mostly there for nectar, which is why it supports adult foragers well and contributes less to brood rearing.
• Silver firAbies albaNo floral nectar and negligible pollen. Its entire forage value is honeydew, which is why nectar and pollen are rated separately in this catalogue — a single bee-friendliness score would make this tree look worthless.
• 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.
• Strawberry treeArbutus unedoValuable out of all proportion to its abundance, because of when it flowers. Late nectar lets colonies enter winter with fresh stores in a landscape that has otherwise shut down.
• RockroseCistus ladaniferAn outstanding pollen source and a good nectar one, and a plant that also supplies resin for propolis — an unusual triple contribution.

Bees associated with this origin

• Western honey beeApis melliferaThe bee behind essentially all the world's honey, and the one most people mean when they say 'bee'. Apis mellifera is a perennial eusocial insect that overwinters as a living cluster rather than dying back each year — which is the whole reason it stores honey in quantity, and therefore the reason it was ever domesticated. It is native to Europe, Africa and western Asia and has been carried by people to every continent except Antarctica.
• BumblebeesBombusLarge, furry, loud, and cold-tolerant in a way no honey bee is. Bumblebees run annual colonies: a mated queen emerges alone in spring, founds a nest by herself, raises workers through the summer, produces new queens and males in late season, and then the entire colony dies except those new queens. They do make honey, in the strict sense of ripened nectar stores — just a few days' worth, because they have no winter to survive as a colony.
• Mining beesAndrenaSolitary ground-nesting bees, and the small volcano-shaped mounds of fine soil that appear on lawns and bare paths in April are theirs. Mining bees are the classic spring solitary bees of the northern hemisphere: short-lived, entirely harmless, often nesting in dense aggregations that look like a colony but are not, and a great many of them are specialists that visit only one kind of flower.
• European dark beeApis mellifera melliferaThe honey bee that was native to northern Europe before anyone imported anything, and one that has been hybridised close to extinction across most of its range. The dark bee is slow to build, frugal, long-lived, and adapted to cold wet summers and long winters — traits that made it unfashionable when Italian stock arrived, and that look considerably more valuable now than they did in 1900.
• Red mason beeOsmia bicornisThe bee in your bee hotel. Osmia bicornis is the commonest cavity-nesting solitary bee in northwest Europe, the one most gardeners actually manage to attract, and one of the most effective fruit pollinators known — a few hundred females will pollinate an orchard acre as thoroughly as a honey bee colony of tens of thousands. It is also, for practical purposes, incapable of stinging anyone.
• Mason beesOsmiaSolitary spring bees that build their nests out of mud, and the best orchard pollinators most gardeners have never noticed. A female mason bee works entirely alone: she finds a hollow tube, provisions a cell with pollen, lays an egg, walls it off with mud, and repeats until the tube is full. She will pollinate an apple tree several times more effectively than a honey bee while doing it, and she is almost incapable of stinging anyone.
• Carniolan honey beeApis mellifera carnicaThe second most widely kept honey bee subspecies, and the one most European beekeepers choose over Italian stock. Carniolans come from the eastern Alps and the Balkans, and they are adapted to a short intense season: explosive spring build-up, rapid contraction in a dearth, frugal winter consumption — and a swarming instinct that gives beekeepers more work than any other trait.
• Carpenter beesXylocopaThe largest bees most people ever see, and among the loudest. Carpenter bees excavate their own tunnels in dead wood using their mandibles — a remarkable feat for an insect — and the biggest species are the size of the top joint of a thumb. The violet carpenter bee, glossy black with iridescent blue-violet wings, is one of the most spectacular insects in Europe and is spreading northwards.

Honey in Europe

European beekeeping is documented continuously from classical antiquity, and the movable-frame hive that made modern beekeeping possible was developed here and in North America in the mid-nineteenth century. Beeswax was for centuries the more valuable product, because the church needed candles.

Deciding between two of them

• Lavender vs orange blossom honey — The two great perfumed honeys of the Mediterranean. Both carry their flower's aromatics almost intact, which is rare — and they are wanted for opposite reasons.
• Chestnut vs strawberry tree honey — The two great bitter honeys of Europe. One is widely available and a good introduction; the other is the most bitter honey in production and divides people completely.
• Buckwheat vs chestnut honey — The two honeys people reach for when they want something assertive. Buckwheat is malty and barnyard; chestnut is tannic and bitter, and the difference decides which food each belongs with.
• Acacia vs linden honey — Both are pale central European tree honeys with short intense flows. One tastes of almost nothing and the other is among the most aromatic honeys there is.
• Thyme vs rosemary honey — The two great Mediterranean herb honeys. Thyme is warm, savoury and assertive; rosemary is pale, delicate and sets fast — and they are used for opposite purposes.
• Lavender vs thyme honey — Two Mediterranean aromatic honeys that end up in the same conversation and belong at different ends of a meal.