Metcalfa Honeydew Honey

Bee Species:

The western honey bee, Apis mellifera. On the Friuli plain the bees work the honeydew in the morning and again late in the afternoon (Barbattini 2001). A Greek beekeeping review of 2016 adds that they take the fresh drops, since older ones skin over or grow mould, and cap the cells quickly, because the honeydew they bring in is already dense.

Color:

Dark amber to almost black when liquid, brown once crystallised

Flavor Profile:

Malty and caramelised, with cooked fruit and a savoury, vegetal edge; low to medium in sweetness, often slightly salty

Tasting Notes:

Very thick and stringy on the spoon, with a fairly persistent finish that can turn slightly astringent, as Italy’s national descriptive sheet records it.

The odour shifts with where the honeydew was gathered. In Piana’s 2020 descriptive sheets for Italian honeys, the honeys of central Italy lean to cooked grape must, long-cooked jam, balsamic vinegar, maple syrup and malt, and those of the Po plain to cooked vegetables, boiled chard, pumpkin, brewer’s yeast and bread crust, together recalling sun-dried tomato or tomato paste.

Aroma:

Warm and caramelised: fig jam, cooked fruit and malt over a savoury note of tomato paste and cooked greens

Defining Compounds:

Minerals, read as electrical conductivity, and the enzyme diastase: both have the highest means of the honey types in the European descriptive sheets (Persano Oddo and Piro 2004). Those sheets rest almost entirely on Italian samples; a Greek beekeeping review reported that honey from Evros analysed at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki measured lower in both.

Sugars: little fructose and glucose and a high share of longer sugars, with maltotriose always present and melezitose only in traces. In Italy’s national sheet that pair, with the higher acidity, separates it from silver fir honeydew honey. The maltotriose is thought to be made by the insect’s own enzymes (Barbattini 2001), and the honey carries dextrins of its own.

No laboratory method recognised internationally separates it from oak honeydew honey or other broadleaf honeydews (International Honey Commission, 2008); in Italy it is identified by tasting panel, by microscope and by where it was made (Piana 2020).

Forage Origin:

Metcalfa pruinosa is a planthopper of the family Flatidae, described in 1830. Its English name is citrus flatid planthopper; it is found on citrus, but it feeds on a wide range of woody plants. It is native to eastern and central North America, from southern Canada to Texas and Florida, and to Bermuda, where its numbers stay low: in July 2000 Wilson and Lucchi counted 72 on four 50-metre forest transects in Missouri and 11,571 on four in Tuscany.

It has one generation a year. Eggs laid in bark crevices in September overwinter; hatching begins in mid-May and goes on in stages for about two months, and the young, called nymphs, wrapped in white waxy threads, grow through five stages (Regione Veneto; EPPO). The adults, seven to nine millimetres long and brown to grey under a bluish-white wax, appear in early July and mate at night in September and October. Nymphs and adults both feed on sap and excrete honeydew.

It feeds on more than 300 kinds of plant, conifers excepted (Piana 2020). The bees take its honeydew from the broadleaved trees, shrubs and brambles of the lowlands and low hills, up to about 400 metres: field maple, ash, black locust, bramble and plane along ditch banks, woodland edges and the hedges between fields. The make-up of the honeydew is thought to follow the plant the insects mostly fed on (Barbattini 2001).

The flow is irregular. It rises in the days after ordinary rain, which washes off the old drops, and the bees work it hardest then. Heat, dry air and wind dry the drops at once, beating rain washes the insects off the plants, and a run of dry years cuts the crop (Barbattini 2001; Italy’s national beekeepers’ union, Unaapi). The same drops feed sooty mould, which blackens the leaves.

The bees also bring in nectar: pollen in Piedmont samples comes from late-flowering plants of the surrounding fields, daisies, knapweeds and plants of the carrot family among them, beside sunflower and maize (L’Apis 2007).

Pairings:

One Italian producer pairs it with mascarpone and a quadrupel-style Trappist beer. Aspromiele, a Piedmont beekeepers’ association, suggests medium, dry cheeses that are not too fatty, Piedmont toma cheeses among them, and stirring the honey into warm milk, which suits its malty side. As an ingredient, Unaapi suggests it in dressings and seasonings, where its salty, acid and vegetal note works, and the same producer uses it where a malt-like sweetness is wanted.