From nearly white creamy honey to light golden, transparent acacia honey or deep brown floral honey – there are countless varieties of honey. But how do these differences come about? How do bees create different types of honey? Let’s break it down for you!
How Bees Produce Different Types of Honey
If you take a look at the honey section in the average supermarket, you’ll notice that most of the honey has the exact same golden-yellow color. It also tends to have a uniform taste. This is because most inexpensive honey is mass-blended and even diluted (with syrup) to achieve a consistent color, flavor, and aroma. A real shame! When kept pure and natural, every jar of honey is unique.
Just like wine, coffee, chocolate, and olive oil develop distinct flavor profiles depending on their origin, the same applies to (pure) honey. Bees don’t intentionally produce different types of honey; the variation occurs based on where they collect their nectar. What flowers and plants are in bloom in that region? During which season was the nectar gathered?
For example, honey made from nectar collected in spring tastes and looks very different from honey harvested in autumn – even when taken from the same beehive.
Acacia Honey, Floral Honey, or Creamed Honey: The Differences
- Acacia honey is light golden, almost transparent, and has a very mild taste. It hardly ever crystallizes.
- Our BFF creamed honey is made from floral honey sourced from areas rich in sunflowers. Honey from flowers such as rapeseed and sunflowers crystallizes quickly. Creamed honey starts as regular liquid honey but is slowly stirred at a low temperature to ensure complete crystallization and thickening. Because the crystallization is controlled, the texture becomes smoother and creamier compared to natural crystallization. Creamed honey is opaque, often pale yellow to golden in color, and spreads more easily than liquid honey.
- Floral honey is liquid and can have a wide range of colors depending on the season and the location of the beehives – ranging from golden yellow or orange hues to dark brown.
Identifying Which Flowers Are Blooming Nearby
Observant beekeepers can often predict which nectar sources are entering the hive. Bees also collect ‘pollen pellets’ on their legs. They store this pollen in the honeycomb cells as a vital energy source. Pollen is packed with proteins, carbohydrates, vitamins, and minerals. Each flower and plant produces pollen in different colors. If you see bees carrying bright orange pollen pellets, there’s a high chance that a field of dandelions is blooming nearby!