Wildflower Honey

Bee Species:

Western honey bee, Apis mellifera. The island’s stock is a closed population: honey bees reached Newfoundland only around 1929, and since 1980 the province has banned imports, so no new bees have arrived legally in more than forty years. The varroa mite, tracheal mite, small hive beetle and greater wax moth have never established here, and the beekeepers’ association states the consequence plainly – its bees “do not require regular use of chemical miticides,” and Newfoundland honey “is not exposed to medications at this time.” Colonies are wintered on 100 to 120 pounds of their own honey.

Color:

Light yellowish amber, going cloudy as it crystallises.

Flavor Profile:

Complex, tangy, faintly fruity.

Tasting Notes:

The crystals are coarse and firm rather than smooth, so a spoonful lifts in pieces rather than running off. Peter Wilkins, who distils Newfoundland honey into the Newfoundland Distillery’s aquavit, describes what it brings as roundness and “a little hint of sweetness, but not that normal sweetness you get with mead or other honeys.” Four Cousins describes its own 2024 crop as light and slightly tangy, with hints of white clover, fireweed and goldenrod from the country around its apiaries.

Aroma:

Strong and complex.

Defining Compounds:

Glucose is the sugar that comes out of solution first, and the tested jar carried 35.5 percent of it against 40.6 percent fructose – a high glucose share, and consistent with the coarse, firm set the same laboratory recorded.

Two other figures bear on how the honey is classified rather than how it tastes. Electrical conductivity of 607 microsiemens per centimetre sits below the 800 that marks a honeydew honey, confirming a nectar honey. Hydroxymethylfurfural below the limit of detection, with diastase at 28 Schade units, indicates honey that has not been heated: warming drives that compound up and the enzyme down. All of these are from single samples of one producer’s crop.

Forage Origin:

Nectar, and on the evidence of the only Newfoundland honey yet analysed, nectar alone – the tested jar carried no honeydew markers at all.

The season starts late. Bees take pollen from alder and pussy willow catkins through April and May, and both pollen and nectar from red and mountain maple, but the beekeepers’ association records that the nectar flow itself does not begin until the last week of May, with the dandelion. White clover follows as the next important plant, then fireweed, then goldenrod. Behind those come coltsfoot, chuckley-pears, cow vetch, bull thistle, northern bush honeysuckle, elderberry, meadowsweet and bog aster, which closes the year in September.

The tested jar shows what that sequence puts in a pound: 48 percent rough-stemmed goldenrod pollen, 35 percent white clover, then raspberry, purple tansy and aster. Purple tansy is sown rather than wild – Four Cousins grows it beside its hives – so a Newfoundland jar can carry a planted flower alongside whatever the barrens offered. Fireweed shows at under 3 percent, though pollen counts understate it: the plant gives more nectar than its share of the grains suggests.

Pairings:

Because it sets coarse and firm, it spreads more readily than it pours. Island retailers suggest it on toast and stirred into tea, and the pairing an independent visitor singled out at the Beestro in Little Rapids was the plainest one on the table: fresh bread, a small cheese selection, and a generous portion of the farm’s own honey.

The same kitchen serves a Humber Valley salad built on nut honey, a seafood chowder finished with honey maple butter, and a honey maple creme brulee. In a glass, the Newfoundland Distillery Company’s Goldrush mixes honey syrup – equal parts honey and water – with its aquavit, lemon juice, mint and a cinnamon stick.