The honey that honeydew brings.

The first spoonful of forest honey almost always gets the same reaction: this is not as sweet as honey. That is an accurate observation. Honeydew honey is less sweet than blossom honey, darker and denser, with a note closer to resin and something baked than to a flower.

The reason is that this honey does not come from blossom at all.

What honeydew is

Aphids live on beech and fir and feed on the sap of the tree. What they leave behind on the needles and leaves is a sweet film, and that is honeydew. Bees collect it once the flowers are gone, in high summer, when the meadow is over.

Nectar comes from the flower. Honeydew comes from the leaf. Every other difference follows from that.

Honeydew honey differs in almost everything: colour, density, sweetness and how long it stays liquid.

Why it almost never sets

How fast honey sets depends on how much glucose it holds. Honeydew has little of it, so this honey stays dense and dark for years, while Vlasina sets in three to six months.

That confuses people who were taught that real honey must go solid. In forest honey the absence of crystallisation is a consequence of where it came from. More on that in the piece on crystallisation.

The year there simply is none

This is the part that is hardest to explain to somebody looking for it in March. Honeydew depends on aphids, and aphids depend on the weather. There can be plenty two years running and then nothing for three.

In the years it fails we do not top the jar up with anything else. There is no blending with meadow honey to make the list look full. That summer there is no forest honey, and the site says so.

That is why this variety has a waiting list: you leave a contact and we write to you before we announce that it is back.

Where ours comes from

All of our forest honey comes from the slopes of Čemernik, at around 1,200 metres, where the hives stand from June to August. That is the third and last stop of the season, the same one Vlasina honey comes from.

The difference is that on that same slope the meadow and the forest sit side by side. When the bees work both blossom and honeydew in a single day, the result is Vlasina honey, joined inside the hive. When they work almost only honeydew, usually in July, the result is pure honeydew honey.

None of that is decided after extraction. It is decided by what was available that week at 1,200 metres.

What it goes with

Being less sweet and denser, it behaves differently at the table and does not suit everything.

• With mature, strong cheese and walnut. That is where it is best and where most people discover it.
• In red wine in winter.
• By the spoon, if you like dark and slightly bitter things.

What it does not suit is pancakes and sweet puddings, where its note argues with everything else. Acacia is a far better choice there, which we wrote about in which honey for what.