The Mediterranean honey

How honey is produced here

Low humidity gives Mediterranean honeys unusually low moisture — frequently 14 to 16 per cent — which makes them dense and long-keeping. Seasons are staggered rather than concentrated, running from March rosemary through to September thyme, so a single apiary can take several distinct crops.

Flavour signature

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

• Herbaceous · 10
• Resinous · 8
• Floral · 7
• Woody · 4
• Spicy · 3
• Fruity · 3
• Malty · 3
• Caramel · 3

Honeys from The Mediterranean

• 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.
• 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.
• Dittany honeyLight amber · PronouncedIntensely aromatic and herbal with a distinct medicinal lift and a warm oregano character — closer to a herbal infusion than to a floral honey.
• Savory honeyLight amber · PronouncedIntensely herbal with a distinct peppery, almost oregano-like bite over a warm sweetness — one of the more assertive Mediterranean aromatics.
• Dalmatian sage honeyWater white · MildDelicate and clean with a faintly medicinal sage note and a light herbal finish — subtle in a way that rewards eating it plain.
• 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.
• Carob honeyAmber · IntenseDark, malty and distinctly savoury with a fermented, almost cheesy note that people either find fascinating or cannot get past.
• Asphodel honeyWater white · DelicateDelicate and softly perfumed with a fresh, almost vegetal lift and a silky weight that gives it more presence than the flavour alone would.
• Rockrose honeyLight amber · PronouncedBalsamic and resinous with a warm amber sweetness underneath — it smells of incense and hot scrubland, and tastes considerably less sweet than its colour suggests.
• Narbonne rosemary honeyWater white · DelicateDelicate and clean with a soft herbal floral note and a texture that does much of the work — one of the classic pale European honeys.
• Hyssop honeyExtra light amber · PronouncedOvertly herbal — camphor, mint and warm stone — over a clean gold sweetness. One of the more clearly aromatic herb honeys.
• Greek erica honeyAmber · PronouncedDark, malty and faintly bitter, with dried fig and caramel behind it. A robust honey and a distinctly autumnal one.
• Holm oak honeydew honeyDark amber · IntenseDark, savoury and barely sweet, with malt, liquorice and a genuine salt-mineral depth. As far from what people expect honey to be as anything in the catalogue.
• Garrigue honeyExtra light amber · ModerateHerbal, warm and dry, with thyme and rosemary running through a light caramel body. The clearest example in the catalogue of a honey tasting of a landscape.

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.
• RockroseCistus ladaniferAn outstanding pollen source and a good nectar one, and a plant that also supplies resin for propolis — an unusual triple contribution.
• 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.
• MarjoramOriganum vulgareRepeatedly ranks at or near the top of controlled garden trials for total insect visits, and unusually it scores well for both bees and butterflies — few plants do both.
• SageSalviaVery high nectar and only moderate pollen — sage feeds adult foragers superbly and contributes comparatively little to brood rearing, which is a common pattern in the mint family.
• 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.
• CarobCeratonia siliquaStructurally important rather than abundant — a good nectar source at a time of year when a Mediterranean colony has almost no alternatives.
• AsphodelAsphodelus ramosusA major early nectar source in country that offers little else at that season, and rated highly for pollen as well.
• HyssopHyssopus officinalisVery high nectar per square metre from a small drought-proof plant, delivered across the late-summer gap.

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.
• Anatolian honey beeApis mellifera anatoliacaThe honey bee of central Turkey, and one of the subspecies at the heart of the species' evolutionary story — Anatolia sits close to where the western honey bee's lineages meet, and Turkey holds more honey bee subspecies within one country than anywhere else. It is hardy, frugal, defensive, and adapted to a continental climate of hard winters and hot dry summers.
• Iberian honey beeApis mellifera iberiensisThe honey bee of Spain and Portugal, and one of the more genetically interesting subspecies in Europe — it carries ancestry from both the western European dark bee lineage and the African lineage across the Strait of Gibraltar, in a gradient running from north to south. It is defensive, frugal, prone to swarming, and superbly adapted to a landscape of long dry summers.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.

Honey in The Mediterranean

Honey from Mount Hymettus was the standard of excellence in the classical world and is named as such by Strabo, Pliny and Horace. Thyme honey with yoghurt and walnuts remains the defining Greek combination, and Mediterranean beekeeping traditions are among the best documented anywhere.

Deciding between two of them

• 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.