Provence honey
Lavender and lavandin plateaux, and the origin of the Miel de Provence protected geographical indication.
2 honeys · part of France
Flavour signature
The flavour families that recur across this origin’s honeys, counted from their sensory profiles rather than asserted.
Honeys from Provence
- Lavender honeyExtra light amber · PronouncedOvertly perfumed — lavender flower, warm hay and a soft fruity sweetness underneath. Aromatic in a way most honeys are not.
- 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
- 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.
- 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.
- Winter savorySatureja montanaAn outstanding nectar source for its size, and one of the best small aromatic herbs for bees.
- BroomCytisus scopariusZero nectar and very high pollen — one of the small group of plants including poppy, hazel and gorse that make the case for separate ratings unanswerable.
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.
- 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.
- Violet carpenter beeXylocopa violaceaOne of Europe's largest and most spectacular bees — a jet-black insect the size of a small bird with wings that flash iridescent violet in sunlight. It excavates nest tunnels in dead wood, and it has expanded northwards across Europe over recent decades, reaching southern England where it was formerly a rarity.
- 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.
Elsewhere in France
Guides covering these honeys
- Why honeys taste and look so differentEvery honey is around 80% sugar. Everything that distinguishes one from another lives in the remaining fifth.
- What makes a honey taste floralFloral character comes from volatile aroma compounds that survive the journey from flower to jar. Very few do, which is why genuinely perfumed honeys are a small minority.
- How bees find flowersBees see ultraviolet, cannot see red, detect a flower's electric field and learn scent faster than almost any other insect. Flowers, for their part, have spent a hundred million years advertising to them.
- Pairing honey with foodTwo principles cover most of it: match intensity, and give strong flavours something to push against. Everything else is detail.
- Floral honeys: the perfumed end of the catalogueA shortlist of the honeys that genuinely smell of flowers, which is a much smaller group than the marketing suggests.
- Geography and honey chemistryHoney has a terroir argument attached to it, and part of it is true. Place does reach the jar — but almost entirely through which plants grow there, not through the soil itself.
Explore these honeys
- Honey finder
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- Flavour selector
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- Honey comparison
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- Honey substitute calculator
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- Storage guide
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