Turkey honey

How honey is produced here

Pine honeydew from the scale insect Marchalina hellenica on Pinus brutia accounts for a very large share of Turkish output by volume. Anatolia sits close to where the western honey bee's lineages meet, and several Turkish regions now operate protected areas for particular subspecies against queen movement.

Flavour signature

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

• Resinous · 5
• Herbaceous · 5
• Woody · 4
• Floral · 3
• Caramel · 3
• Malty · 2
• Mineral and saline · 2
• Phenolic and medicinal · 2

Honeys from Turkey

• Pine honeydew honeyAmber · PronouncedResinous, malty and markedly less sweet than floral honey, with a woody, slightly salty depth and no floral character at all.
• Anzer honeyLight amber · PronouncedIntensely aromatic and complex, with a pronounced herbal and floral character and a long finish that many describe as almost perfumed.
• Mad honeyAmber · IntenseBitter, sharp and astringent with a burnt-caramel edge and a distinct throat-catching sensation that is not a flavour but a pharmacological effect.
• Oregano honeyLight amber · PronouncedIntensely herbal and warm, with an oregano-and-thyme aromatic over a caramel base and a dry, faintly medicinal finish.
• Chestnut honeyAmber · IntenseAromatic, woody and unmistakably bitter — sweetness first, tannin second, and a long dry finish.
• Milk vetch honeyWater white · MildSoft, mild and slightly floral with a faint green-bean freshness — an unassuming honey made in enormous quantity.
• Thyme honeyLight amber · PronouncedWarm, herbal and savoury — thyme and dry stone, with a peppery lift and a very long finish.
• Sunflower honeyExtra light amber · ModerateStraw, beeswax and pollen, with a slightly waxy mouthfeel and a fresh, faintly herbal edge.
• Greek erica honeyAmber · PronouncedDark, malty and faintly bitter, with dried fig and caramel behind it. A robust honey and a distinctly autumnal one.
• Karakovan honeyLight amber · ModerateComplex, floral and herbal at once, eaten with the wax. Its character is a mountain and a year rather than a species.

Plants behind these honeys

• ThymeThymus
• Scots pinePinus sylvestrisNo floral nectar, moderate wind-borne pollen that bees will collect, and honeydew in very large quantities where the scale insect is established.
• 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.
• Sweet chestnutCastanea sativaAn exceptional pollen source — the catkins shed enormous quantities — and a good nectar source in the right weather. The pollen arrives at a useful moment for colonies building towards late summer.
• Chinese milk vetchAstragalus sinicusVery high nectar delivered at vast scale in early spring, and the anchor of migratory beekeeping across southern China.
• SunflowerHelianthus annuusAn outstanding late-summer pollen source at a point in the season when pollen is becoming scarce, which matters for colonies raising the bees that will overwinter.
• Greek heathErica manipulifloraThe most important autumn forage across much of the Aegean, and the reason colonies there can be wintered without heavy feeding.
• 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.
• Viper's buglossEchium vulgareAmong the most productive nectar plants in the European flora per flower, and a good pollen source alongside it. In New Zealand, naturalised echium is a significant commercial honey source under the name blue borage.
• Wildflower meadowMixed native floraThe highest combined forage value of anything in this catalogue, because of diversity and duration rather than any single plant's output.

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.
• 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.
• Caucasian honey beeApis mellifera caucasiaThe longest-tongued honey bee subspecies, and the one that can work red clover where others cannot. Caucasians come from the high valleys of Georgia and the surrounding mountains, and they carry two distinctive traits: a tongue reaching over 7 mm, and an enthusiasm for propolis that makes their hives genuinely difficult to open.
• 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.
• Himalayan giant honey beeApis laboriosaThe largest honey bee in the world, nesting on sheer Himalayan cliff faces at altitudes up to four thousand metres, and the source of the red honey harvested by Nepalese honey hunters descending rope ladders down rock walls. It was regarded as a high-altitude form of the giant honey bee until the 1980s and is now generally treated as a separate species, and it is the only honey bee adapted to genuine mountain cold.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.

Honey in Turkey

Black Sea beekeeping includes hoisting hollowed chestnut trunk hives high into trees against bears. Mad honey has been documented since Xenophon's account of a Greek army incapacitated near Trabzon in 401 BCE, and the same honey is still produced on the same coast.