Honeydew or Forest Honey

When honey bees create honeydew or forest honey, they don’t start with sweet nectar gathered from flower blossoms. Rather, they create this unique honey with another sweet substance called honeydew—produced by aphids. This sweet substance is a natural waste product excreted by aphids as a byproduct of consuming plant sap. The aphids eat the sap not so much for sugars but for the amino acids it contains. This means that most of the sugars are expelled by the aphid as honeydew, a substance that bees love (ants too).

Since honeydew is chemically different from nectar, honeydew honey is also chemically different from regular blossom honey. It is usually darker with a higher mineral content, and has with a stronger taste and particular nutritional/therapeutic benefits. It is highly prized in Europe but is relatively unknown in North America. Given the prevalence of aphids world-wide, it may not be surprising to learn that much blossom honey from around the world contains some percentage of honeydew honey.

Honeydew honey comes in many varieties depending upon the type of plant and the species of aphid; but the ones that find their way onto our table are typified by a consistent production and a large quantity of honeydew that is attractive to bees.