Japan honey

How honey is produced here

Commercial production uses western honey bees; the Japanese honey bee, a subspecies of Apis cerana, is kept traditionally in small numbers and is notable for its heat-balling defence against giant hornets, which the introduced bee has never learned. Japan is also the country where managed solitary bee pollination is most advanced, with the Japanese orchard bee handling a majority of the apple crop in some prefectures.

Flavour signature

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

• Malty · 3
• Floral · 2
• Caramel · 2
• Nutty · 2
• Fruity · 2

Honeys from Japan

• Mikan honeyExtra white · MildDelicate and bright with a pronounced fresh citrus-blossom aroma and a clean acidity — lighter and fresher than Mediterranean orange blossom honey.
• Tochi honeyAmber · PronouncedMalty and rich with a distinct woody astringency and a long dry finish — assertive without being harsh, and closer to a dark forest honey than to a blossom one.
• Loquat honeyAmber · PronouncedRich and malty with a distinct almond-marzipan note over dark caramel — one of the more aromatic East Asian honeys and far stronger than its pale-fruited source suggests.
• Cherry blossom honeyExtra white · ModerateMarzipan first, then a light stone-fruit sweetness — the almond note is the defining character and it is unmistakable.
• Buckwheat honeyDark amber · IntenseMalt, molasses and wet straw, with a savoury, almost animal depth. The most polarising honey in general production.

Plants behind these honeys

• Sweet orangeCitrus sinensisA heavy nectar source over a substantial period, and moderate for pollen.
• LemonCitrus limonExcellent nectar over an unusually long and repeated window, and only a moderate pollen contribution.
• Horse chestnutAesculus hippocastanumTop-rated for both, in enormous quantity, from a single tree. One mature horse chestnut is worth a considerable area of border planting.
• LoquatEriobotrya japonicaAn outstanding winter nectar and pollen source in subtropical climates, and correspondingly valuable.
• CherryPrunus aviumImportant early forage arriving when colonies are expanding and bumblebee queens are founding nests. Almost all of it is consumed rather than stored.
• BuckwheatFagopyrum esculentumGenuinely useful as a late-summer gap filler, and its speed from sowing to flower makes it one of the few forage plants that can be deployed tactically within a single season.

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.
• 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.
• 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.
• Tawny mining beeAndrena fulvaThe bright orange bee that appears on lawns in April and produces small volcano-shaped mounds of soil, prompting a great many alarmed enquiries about infestations. It is a solitary bee, it is entirely harmless, the mounds disappear within weeks, and it is one of the most conspicuous and most misidentified insects of the British spring.
• 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.

Honey in Japan

Tochi, the Japanese horse chestnut, was a mountain famine food requiring days of leaching, and its honey carries the tree's cultural weight in mountain communities. Mikan honey from the satsuma orchards is the most sought-after domestic type.