Hawaii honey

How honey is produced here

Kiawe honey from the Puako region crystallises to a fine white paste and is harvested from the comb before it fully sets. Ohia lehua, from the endemic Metrosideros, is the one genuinely native Hawaiian honey and comes from forest under pressure from an introduced fungal disease.

Flavour signature

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

• Buttery · 2
• Floral · 2
• Caramel · 2
• Fruity · 2

Honeys from Hawaii

• Kiawe honeyWater white · DelicateVery mild, clean and faintly vanilla-like, with a texture that does most of the work — smooth, buttery and dissolving rather than sticky.
• Ohia lehua honeyWater white · DelicateDelicate and clean with a distinct fresh-butter quality and a light floral lift — one of the mildest honeys with genuine character rather than none.
• Brazilian pepper honeyLight amber · ModerateWarm and peppery with a distinct resinous spice and a faint tartness — genuinely reminiscent of the pink peppercorns the plant produces.
• Macadamia honeyAmber · PronouncedMalty and nutty with a roasted depth and a butterscotch base — one of the few honeys that genuinely tastes like the crop it came from.

Plants behind these honeys

• MesquiteProsopisA principal desert forage plant, providing both nectar and pollen in landscapes with very few alternatives.
• Brazilian pepperSchinus terebinthifoliaA good autumn nectar source at a point in the Florida year when colonies would otherwise be consuming stores.
• MacadamiaMacadamia integrifoliaA good nectar and pollen source over a defined spring window.

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.
• Metallic green sweat beeAgapostemonBrilliant metallic green bees of the American grasslands and gardens, and among the most immediately recognisable small bees anywhere. In several species the sexes differ sharply: females are entirely metallic green while males have a green thorax and a boldly yellow-and-black striped abdomen, which leads to a great deal of confused reporting.
• Leafcutter beesMegachileThe bees responsible for the neat semicircular notches cut from rose and lilac leaves every summer. A female leafcutter bee cuts oval pieces of leaf with her mandibles, carries each one back curled beneath her body, and uses them to line and seal a nest cell — the cells end up looking like small green cigars. The damage to the plant is cosmetic and the bee is one of the most efficient pollinators in agriculture.
• Stingless beesMeliponiniThe other honey-making bees, and the only serious rival to Apis for that title. Stingless bees are tropical, perennial and genuinely eusocial, and they store honey in clusters of egg-shaped wax-and-resin pots rather than in hexagonal comb. Their honey is different enough from Apis honey — wetter, more acidic, sharper, prone to fermenting — that several countries have had to write separate standards for it. They have been kept by people in Mesoamerica, Australia, Africa and South-East Asia for thousands of years, in traditions entirely independent of European beekeeping.