Pine honey (pine honeydew honey)

Pine honey is a honeydew honey: bees make it not from nectar but from honeydew on pine trees. The best-known example is Turkish çam balı, collected from the honeydew of the insect Marchalina hellenica on Pinus brutia. The honey is dark, greenish brown, with a woody, resinous smell.

The list of honeydew sources in Europe names the pines Pinus halepensis and Pinus brutia. The protected Muğla Çam Balı (Türkiye) is made in twelve districts of Muğla province: about 66,560 ha of red pine are infested by this insect, and the season runs from September to November. Bees are not fed, and the honey is produced and packed in the area, as comb, karakovan comb or filtered honey.

The colour runs from dark to very dark greenish brown, the smell is woody and resinous, acidity low, sweetness medium, bitterness absent and crystallisation slow. The specification sets water at up to 18 %, sucrose up to 3.5 g, fructose plus glucose at least 47 g per 100 g, conductivity at least 0.9 mS/cm and HMF up to 15 mg/kg.

Why this matters to you: pine honey is honeydew, so its flavour is closer to forest honeydew than to floral honey and lacks sweet floral lightness. On the label look for "pine", "honeydew" and the country of harvest.