India honey

How honey is produced here

Apis cerana in wall and log hives dominates the hills; commercial Apis mellifera apiaries work the plains crops of mustard, coriander, litchi and eucalyptus. Wild Apis dorsata combs supply mahua, jamun and Sundarban mangrove honey, harvested from forest trees by communities with long-established rights and practices.

Flavour signature

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

• Caramel · 10
• Fruity · 7
• Floral · 7
• Spicy · 6
• Herbaceous · 5
• Vegetal · 5
• Nutty · 4
• Molasses and treacle · 3

Honeys from India

• Neem honeyAmber · IntenseDistinctly bitter with a herbal, faintly medicinal character over a restrained sweetness — one of the least conventionally pleasant honeys in the catalogue, and deliberately so.
• Mahua honeyDark amber · IntenseHeavy and molasses-like with a fermented dried-fruit note and a faintly smoky finish — one of the more challenging Indian honeys and among the most distinctive.
• Jamun honeyAmber · PronouncedDark, tannic and astringent with a dried-fruit depth and a dry finish — noticeably less sweet than most honeys of similar colour.
• Coriander honeyLight amber · PronouncedWarm and spicy with an unmistakable coriander-seed aroma over a caramel base — one of the most immediately recognisable honeys there is.
• Karanj honeyLight amber · ModerateWarm and herbal with a faint bitterness and a light caramel base — mild by Indian standards and more interesting than its modest reputation suggests.
• Sundarbans mangrove honeyExtra light amber · ModerateLight, tangy and faintly saline with a fresh floral character — considerably more delicate than its dramatic provenance would suggest.
• Mango blossom honeyLight amber · ModerateWarm and fruity with a distinct tropical-stone-fruit note and a faint resinous edge — one of the honeys that does taste recognisably of its tree's fruit, though more faintly than people expect.
• Sesame honeyExtra light amber · MildMild and clean with a distinct toasted-nut note and a light caramel base — the nutty character is genuine rather than suggested by the name.
• Mustard honeyExtra white · MildVery sweet and very mild with a faint pungent brassica note when fresh, fading to clean blandness as it ages and sets.
• Himalayan forest honeyLight amber · ModerateComplex and warm, with a herbal and faintly smoky character reflecting both the flora and the traditional processing — spring honey is lighter and more floral, autumn honey darker and more resinous.
• Lychee honeyExtra light amber · ModerateDelicately floral with a distinct rose-and-lychee perfume, and a clean sweetness underneath that keeps it from being heavy.
• Tulsi honeyExtra light amber · PronouncedDistinctly clove-scented over a light caramel body — one of the few herb honeys that genuinely smells of the herb.
• Ajwain honeyExtra light amber · PronouncedAromatic and faintly medicinal, with a clear thyme-and-caraway note over light amber sweetness.
• Moringa honeyExtra light amber · ModerateGreen, peppery and faintly vegetal over a light sweetness — recognisably related to the mustard-oil chemistry running through the whole plant.
• Babul honeyLight amber · ModerateWarm, nutty and full-bodied with a faint tannic dryness. A robust everyday honey rather than a delicate one.
• Tamarind honeyLight amber · ModerateAmber, warm and distinctly tart, with a caramel body and a sour-fruit edge that does echo the tamarind pod.
• Cardamom honeyExtra light amber · PronouncedGenuinely spice-scented — eucalyptol and a sweet resinous lift over pale amber sweetness. One of the clearest spice signatures of any honey.
• Coconut blossom honeyExtra white · MildLight, clean and mildly waxy with a faint nuttiness. It tastes nothing like coconut, which surprises almost everyone.
• Niger seed honeyExtra light amber · MildGolden, clean and gently grassy, with a soft finish. Closer to sunflower honey than to the darker forest honeys of the same country.
• Safflower honeyExtra light amber · MildLight amber and mildly nutty, with a faint thistle bitterness at the finish. Unassertive and rather more interesting than most crop honeys.

Plants behind these honeys

• NeemAzadirachta indicaA good dry-season nectar source across the Indian subcontinent.
• MahuaMadhuca longifoliaAn excellent spring nectar source at the hottest and driest point of the central Indian year.
• Wild carrotDaucus carotaModerate nectar and good pollen, in the most accessible form available — its value is the breadth of the visitor list rather than the volume.
• FennelFoeniculum vulgareGood for both in a completely accessible form, over a long late-summer window, from a plant that needs nothing.
• KaranjPongamia pinnataA good nectar and pollen source at the thinnest point of the Indian year.
• MangoMangifera indicaA good dry-season nectar and pollen source across the tropics.
• SesameSesamum indicumA good nectar and pollen source, and unusual in offering nectar from two different kinds of gland.
• 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.
• LemonCitrus limonExcellent nectar over an unusually long and repeated window, and only a moderate pollen contribution.
• TulsiOcimum tenuiflorumA dependable post-monsoon source in Indian apiaries, and one of the few whose cultivated area is driven by religious and medicinal use rather than by agriculture.

Bees associated with this origin

• Asian honey beeApis ceranaThe western honey bee's counterpart across Asia, and a bee whose importance is out of all proportion to its honey yield. Apis cerana is the original host of Varroa destructor — the mite that has reshaped beekeeping worldwide — and it lives with the parasite without collapse. Understanding how is one of the more consequential open questions in apiculture.
• 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.
• Dwarf honey beeApis floreaThe smallest honey bee, and the one that does its waggle dance the right way up. Apis florea builds a single small comb wrapped around a twig in a bush, and because the top of that comb forms a horizontal platform, the dancing bee points directly at the food source rather than translating the direction into an angle against gravity. It is the simplest form of the dance language and probably the ancestral one.
• Giant honey beeApis dorsataThe largest honey bee in the world, and the one that cannot be kept. Apis dorsata builds a single enormous open comb hanging from a branch or a cliff overhang, defends it ferociously, migrates hundreds of kilometres seasonally, and has defeated every serious attempt to hive it. It produces a great deal of honey and all of it has to be hunted rather than farmed — which is why the honey it makes comes with rope ladders and night climbs attached.
• 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.
• Sweat beesHalictidaeThe bees that land on your arm in hot weather, and the group that breaks the tidy division between solitary and social bees more thoroughly than anything else in the order. Some sweat bees are strictly solitary, some form small colonies with a queen and workers, and a number switch between the two depending on latitude, altitude and season — the same species living socially in a warm valley and solitarily on the hill above it. They are also small, abundant, easily overlooked, and among the most important wild pollinators in temperate and tropical agriculture alike.
• 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.
• 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.

Honey in India

Honey holds a place in Ayurvedic practice and in Hindu ritual going back millennia, and neem and mahua carry cultural weight far beyond their honey. Colonial-era restrictions on mahua distillation were a significant Adivasi grievance, and the tree's place in central Indian life is difficult to overstate.