Sicily honey

How honey is produced here

Sulla, citrus and thyme are the principal flows, with a substantial thistle and cardoon crop from the interior. Sicilian production is heavily seasonal and the summer drought shuts everything down from July.

Flavour signature

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

• Floral · 4
• Vegetal · 3
• Fruity · 3
• Nutty · 2
• Citrus · 2
• Herbaceous · 2
• Spicy · 2
• Caramel · 2

Honeys from Sicily

• Sulla honeyWater white · DelicateVery delicate and clean, with a soft almond-and-fresh-grass note and almost no aftertaste.
• Lemon blossom honeyWater white · ModerateBright, sharply citrus and clean — lemon zest and blossom rather than the softer neroli of orange blossom, with a genuine acidity behind it.
• Thyme honeyLight amber · PronouncedWarm, herbal and savoury — thyme and dry stone, with a peppery lift and a very long finish.
• Thistle honeyExtra light amber · ModerateWarm and herbaceous with a hay-and-spice character and a faint bitterness at the end.
• 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.
• Cardoon honeyLight amber · PronouncedSavoury and faintly bitter, with a warm caramel body and an unmistakable green-vegetable note that is genuinely artichoke-like.
• Orange blossom honeyExtra white · ModerateUnmistakably floral and citrus-scented — orange blossom in the glass, with the fruit itself somewhere behind it.

Plants behind these honeys

• LemonCitrus limonExcellent nectar over an unusually long and repeated window, and only a moderate pollen contribution.
• ThistleGalactites tomentosaAmong the most productive nectar plants in Mediterranean grassland, and one of the few that supports butterflies and bees equally well.
• ThymeThymus
• AsphodelAsphodelus ramosusA major early nectar source in country that offers little else at that season, and rated highly for pollen as well.
• Globe artichokeCynara cardunculusAn outstanding nectar and pollen source, and one of the single most productive flowers in a garden.
• Sweet orangeCitrus sinensisA heavy nectar source over a substantial period, and moderate for pollen.

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.
• Long-horned beesEucera and MelissodesSolitary summer bees whose males carry antennae longer than their own bodies, and the group a bee orchid is pretending to be. Several Ophrys orchids produce flowers that mimic the shape, hair and scent of a female Eucera closely enough that males attempt to mate with them, picking up pollen in the process — one of the most extraordinary pollination systems in botany, and one that only works because these particular bees exist.
• Italian honey beeApis mellifera ligusticaThe most widely kept honey bee subspecies in the world, and the golden-banded bee most people picture when they think of one. Italian bees were exported from the Ligurian valleys from the mid nineteenth century and now underpin commercial beekeeping across the Americas, Australasia and much of Europe — chosen for gentleness, prolific brood rearing and a strong disinclination to swarm.
• 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.

Honey in Sicily

The Sicilian black bee, Apis mellifera siciliana, was reduced to a handful of colonies on the Iblei plateau before a deliberate recovery programme. It is one of very few European bee subspecies to have been brought back from that position.

Deciding between two of them

• Orange vs lemon blossom honey — Two citrus honeys from the same orchards, and the difference is sharper than the shared category suggests: one is perfumed and the other is bright.