Eucalyptus Remota Honey (Mallee-Ash)

The Story

In 1934 the botanist William Blakely named a Kangaroo Island eucalypt Eucalyptus remota – remote – because it grows about as far from its relatives as a tree can: its closest kin are the ash eucalypts of the New South Wales high country, a continent away, and this one species grows on the island’s rugged western end and nowhere else on earth. The common name, Kangaroo Island mallee-ash, tells the same story in English – ash for the pale-timbered family of eucalypts it belongs to, mallee for the low, many-stemmed form it takes here. In the spring of 2019, hives of the island’s Ligurian bees stood in that country while the remota flowered. A month later, lightning-lit fires burned through 96 per cent of Flinders Chase National Park, and nearly all of the mallee-ash with it. The tree resprouts from a rootstock and takes up to seven years to flower again. The honey drawn from those hives before the fire is sold in individually numbered jars under the botanical name, and the producer states the situation plainly: each jar holds a botanical moment that cannot yet be repeated.

Characteristics

This honey’s defining characteristic is that it cannot currently be made again. Each jar is individually numbered, drawn from the spring 2019 flow – the last before the fires – and sold under the tree’s botanical name by the island’s Ligurian bee company. The flavour record is the producer’s: rich, velvety, burnt sugar and candied pecan. It was a small, uncertain flow even before the fires, and the numbered jars now standing are the whole supply until the regrowing mallee-ash flowers in force again – on the tree’s own schedule, not the beekeeper’s.

Click to Display — The Details: botanical origin, sensory profile, and its regional identity

Botanical Name: Kangaroo Island mallee-ash (Eucalyptus remota)

Botanical Family: Myrtaceae

Bee Species:

The honey was made by the pure Ligurian bees (Apis mellifera ligustica) of Kangaroo Island, the strain protected by the world’s oldest bee sanctuary, declared in 1885. The island remains free of the varroa mite; in February 2026 Australia’s national eradication program formally ended, with the mite confirmed as established across five states and territories, including the South Australian mainland across the strait.

Color:

dark amber, shading to brown in the jar

Flavor Profile:

rich and velvety; burnt sugar and candied pecan – the producer likens it to creme brulee

Tasting Notes:

The only sensory record belongs to the sole producer, and it is consistent everywhere the honey is described: rich and velvety, with the burnt-sugar and candied-pecan character of creme brulee. The producer’s description ends with advice: this is, in its words, a honey worth slowing down for.

Forage Origin:

The honey is made from the nectar of the Kangaroo Island mallee-ash, Eucalyptus remota, which grows on the western third of Kangaroo Island – from Mount Taylor to Flinders Chase National Park – and nowhere else. It grows as a tree to fifteen metres or a low mallee to four, with smooth grey-to-cream bark above a rough, fibrous trunk, and it flowers white in summer, with up to twenty-one buds in a single cluster. It grows on gravelly sands over laterite, standing over a heath of desert banksia and Tate’s grass-tree in the plant community the state’s biological survey maps as its own.

The tree belongs to the ash group of eucalypts – the family of silvertop ash and the mallee ashes of the New South Wales high country – and it is that group’s lone far-western member. After fire it does not die the way the seed-only karri does; it resprouts from a lignotuber, the woody rootstock at its base, and regrows toward flowering over years.

Pairings:

The producer’s own label carries the serving advice: over baked goods, and with desserts under whipped cream – pairings that follow the honey’s creme brulee character. The jar is small – 300 grams – and each one is numbered by hand.

Origin Story

The names came first, and each tells a true story. Walter Gill collected specimens on Kangaroo Island in 1907; William Blakely described the species in 1934 and named it remota, from the Latin for remote, because it grows distant from every one of its relatives – the ash eucalypts, whose home is the high country of New South Wales, a continent to the east. The English name says the rest: ash, from the colonial timber convention that named pale-timbered eucalypts for the European ash they resembled, and mallee for the low, many-stemmed form. The jar carries the Latin name; the state’s herbarium and biological surveys carry the English one. Both are correct, and both say the same thing – this tree is an outlier, alone at the far end of its family’s range.

The honey’s own story turns on one month. In the spring of 2019 the Ligurian bee company’s hives worked the flowering mallee-ash on the western end. In December, lightning started the fires that became the largest in the island’s recorded history: about 211,000 hectares burned – close to half the island – including 96 per cent of Flinders Chase National Park and nearly all of the mallee-ash. The State Herbarium sent botanists to survey the regrowth in early 2021, and the Botanic Gardens’ seed bank collected 131,000 mallee-ash seeds from the recovering stands that autumn. The honey taken before the fires was bottled in individually numbered jars, and the producer sells it as what it is: a botanical moment in time.

Cultural Context

The tree’s country is the island’s wildest quarter. Flinders Chase National Park covers 41,300 hectares of the western end, taking in the Remarkable Rocks, Admirals Arch and the lighthouse precincts at Cape Borda and Cape du Couedic, their light stations and keepers’ cottages listed on the State and National Heritage registers. The park’s new visitor centre, completed as part of the bushfire recovery, is the base for seeing the regrowth this page describes: the mallee shrublands returning under the blackened stems of their former canopy.

Harvest & Forage

Even before the fires, this was a small and uncertain flow – the mallee-ash flowers in summer, and its nectar was collected by hives moved onto the western end for the bloom. The honey is sold as a single-origin varietal; its monofloral standing rests on that site placement during the remota flowering, as no pollen analysis of the honey has been published.

Since the fires, there is no flow at all. The burnt trees are resprouting from their lignotubers and take up to seven years to return to full flowering, which places the earliest recovery of the harvest around the late 2020s. The numbered jars from 2019 are the supply until then, and the producer states they are unlikely to be repeated.

Beekeeping Context

One producer makes this honey: the Kangaroo Island Ligurian Bee Co of Kingscote, the family business formerly trading as Island Beehive, which runs more than eight hundred hives across the island, moving them with the flowering, and bottles rare site-specific flows as numbered small-batch releases. The remota release is the one that cannot currently be repeated. The operation is certified organic, and it works inside the bee sanctuary the island has been since 1885 – the reason the bees themselves are a pure strain found nowhere else, making a honey from a tree found nowhere else.

Named Producers

Kangaroo Island Ligurian Bee Co – Kingscote, Kangaroo Island. The sole producer; sells the honey as a numbered small-batch release under the botanical name. https://kangarooislandbeeco.com.au