Basswood (Linden) Honey

Bee Species:

Apis mellifera, the western honey bee, produces every Canadian jar of this honey. No bee native to Canada makes honey at all.

What distinguishes the bee’s work on basswood is speed. The flowers hang in loose clusters of four to forty on a stalk fixed to a leafy bract, and the whole tree opens over roughly two weeks, so a colony within range meets a large, brief supply and works it hard. Ontario beekeepers describe the flow as a stampede, and report supers filling in two to four days when the weather holds. That rate is what makes a clean batch possible at all: the basswood flow runs fast enough to dominate what the colony brings in, rather than blending gradually into the summer bloom.

The honey bee is one visitor among many. A study of Tilia pollination recorded sixty-six insect species from twenty-nine families on the flowers, bees and flies through the day and moths after dark.

Color:

Water-white to pale amber, with a faint green cast when fresh

Flavor Profile:

Fresh and minty over a clean sweetness, with citrus and a long, cool finish

Tasting Notes:

The menthol note is the one thing nearly every Canadian and Quebec seller names, in two languages and in different words, which is the strongest reason to trust it: mint and lemon, mint and apple, a hint of lime or mint, delicate and minty, notes mentholees. It is not mint. It is the tree’s own aromatics, and it reads as coolness rather than flavour, arriving late and staying.

The most useful description on record comes from an Ontario beekeeper writing about her own jars rather than selling them, and it is broader than the marketing copy: buttery, waxy, metallic or minty, with the metallic and buttery notes reminding her of buttery popcorn.

Producers in the Hautes-Laurentides and Lotbiniere add tropical fruit – pineapple and passionfruit – to the same honey. In specialty markets it is described as sweet and fruity ahead of the cool finish.

Aroma:

Strongly fragrant and green; menthol and lemon over cut hay

Forage Origin:

Primary: American basswood (basswood, linden, whitewood, bee tree, Tilia americana, Malvaceae). The northernmost species of its genus and the only Tilia native to North America. Its Canadian range runs from southwestern New Brunswick west through southern Quebec and southern and western Ontario to the southeast corner of Manitoba – which places the tree in the eastern provinces that hold most of Canada’s beekeepers, and leaves it out of the prairie provinces that produce four fifths of the country’s honey. It rarely forms pure stands, and is dominant in a single forest type, sugar maple-basswood. Flowering begins after the leaves open, generally in June but running from late May to early July with latitude and the year’s temperatures, and lasts about two weeks. The flowers are small, fragrant and yellow-white, borne in loose clusters on a stalk attached to a leafy bract, and all stages of flowering are present on one tree at once. The United States Forest Service puts the yield plainly: “Basswood flowers produce an abundance of nectar from which choice honey is made. In fact, in some parts of its range basswood is known as the bee-tree.”

Secondary: littleleaf linden (small-leaved lime, Tilia cordata, Malvaceae). A European species, not native to Canada, and one of the most widely planted street trees in the country. Montreal’s own tree inventory puts linden among its commonest genera and the littleleaf European linden as the commonest species within it; it is likewise one of the most common street trees in Toronto and the surrounding region. It flowers in early July, a little after the native basswood. Canadian jars reflect the mixture honestly where they can: an Ottawa producer describes its linden honey as coming from basswood and other linden tree flowers rather than from one species.

Basswood, linden and lime all name the same genus. Basswood is the North American word, linden the European one and increasingly the Canadian retail one, and lime the British – the last worth setting aside in Canada, because it has nothing to do with the citrus fruit. Every Canadian seller that leads with one of the words glosses it to another, which is a fair measure of how much help the buyer needs. The name basswood itself comes from bast, the tree’s fibrous inner bark, which was soaked and separated into cordage, netting and matting long before anyone in North America kept bees. The soft, even, close-grained wood is the carver’s standard timber and is still cut for instruments and turnery.

Pairings:

The menthol note is volatile, which sets the rule: use it where it is warmed rather than cooked. Producers on both sides of the Ottawa river suggest much the same things.

Stir it into herbal and mint teas, where the heat of the cup lifts the cool note instead of driving it off. Serve it against a soft-rinded cheese – an Ottawa producer suggests Camembert with green grapes, pecans and a crusty baguette – or over a nutty hard cheese, which is how one of its Ontario buyers reports eating it. It is suggested over seared scallops and poached pears, and it is thin enough to drizzle straight from the spoon.

Keep it out of long baking. Heat that leaves a clover honey much as it was will drive off the aromatics that distinguish this one.