Lavender Honey

Bee Species:

Lavender honey is a western honey bee’s crop (Apis mellifera). In the Yili valley some of it comes from beekeepers keeping the Xinjiang black bee (新疆黑蜂, Xīnjiāng hēifēng).

The honey bee has competition on lavender. Bumble bees have tongues long enough for the flower’s corolla tube and work the flowers three times faster; on lavandin at the University of Sussex they were 92 of every 100 bees counted. In Bulgaria, where a 2022 study found pollinators an important factor in the oil yield, they dominate the visits to true lavender.

Color:

Very pale, clear light yellow in French lavandin honey; light amber in Bulgaria’s true-lavender honey

Flavor Profile:

Sweet, floral, woody and fresh-fruity, without bitterness

Tasting Notes:

The honey tastes of the flowers, not of the oil. It is sweet, with medium acidity and no bitterness; in the mouth it is woody, fresh and floral, it holds for a medium length, and it sometimes finishes on a note of blackcurrant. Provence’s Label Rouge calls its taste “fortement sucrée et légèrement acide, surtout lorsque le miel est issu de lavandes” (strongly sweet and lightly acid, especially when the honey comes from true lavender).

That difference from the oil was once evidence. When the lavender growers blamed the bees for lost oil, the beekeepers answered that the honey’s scent is “très différent de celui de l’essence” (very different from the oil’s), so the bees could not be taking the oil, and the agronomist E. Barbier, reporting the dispute in 1963, agreed: “Cette remarque sur le parfum du miel est exacte” (this remark on the honey’s scent is correct). Bulgarian and Turkish producers say the same of their honey, and Bulgarian producers read a strongly lavender-scented jar as a sign of added oil, though Bulgaria’s 2005 honey ordinance describes the aroma as recalling lavender.

Far from the fields, sellers describe it their own way. In Japan, where specialist shops stock lavender honey imported from France, Bulgaria and Spain, they often say it recalls a rice cake wrapped in a salted cherry leaf (桜餅, sakura-mochi).

Aroma:

Woody, floral and fresh-fruity, with a vegetal note

Defining Compounds:

Its chemistry follows from its flow. The nectar is rich in sucrose and the flow is heavy, so the bees leave more sucrose unconverted than in most honeys: a mean of 5.7 and a maximum of 15.2 grams per 100 grams in the International Honey Commission’s analyses. The Codex honey standard and the European directive give Lavandula honey a sucrose limit of 15 grams per 100 grams, against 5 for most honeys, and Provence’s Label Rouge takes more than 2 percent as its reference.

One authenticity test also returns false results on it. In a study by ITSAP, France’s technical beekeeping institute, 27 of 51 barrels of 2023 Provence lavender honey passed every test but the LC-IRMS isotope test, which laboratories have adjusted for this sucrose-rich honey since 2017; ITSAP judged the failures false positives and advised setting the test aside for it.

Its aroma is harder to pin down. Coumarin, a volatile compound rare in honey, is found in the honeys of true lavender and lavandin and has served in them as a freshness indicator, but no single compound separates the lavender honeys of different species: a 2020 review of honey volatiles found it “not possible to identify reliable markers”.

Forage Origin:

Primary: lavandin (Lavandula × intermedia, Lamiaceae). The large, sterile hybrid that most lavender honey comes from. It arises when true lavender’s pollen reaches the stigma of spike lavender – seed from spike growing near true lavender often comes up lavandin, while seed of true lavender never does – and it sets no seed of its own, so it is grown in named varieties chosen for oil: ‘Abrial’, ‘Grosso’, ‘Super A’, ‘Grande Bleue’. A flower spike carries three to four times the flowers of true lavender and nearly three times the weight of calyces, where the oil cells sit, and each flower gives more nectar than true lavender’s, rich in sucrose, up to 54 percent of its dry matter. Its pollen grains are mostly empty, 2 to 16 percent viable against 94 to 99 percent in the parent species, and bees do not collect them.

Secondary: true lavender (Lavandula angustifolia, Lamiaceae). The mountain parent. It grows on the high plateaus of Sault and Albion in France, above about 800 metres, and in six named varieties in Bulgaria, and a draft Chinese industry standard defines lavender honey on it. It sets seed and gives the bee pollen as well as nectar, but less nectar per flower than any lavandin measured in open-field trials in Provence.

English names do not follow the botany. The International Honey Commission’s list calls lavandin “English lavender” and L. stoechas “French lavender”, and sea lavender (Limonium), whose honey is sold on the Norfolk coast, is a salt-marsh plant and a different honey.

Pairings:

Cheese first, and goat cheese above all. The Paris cheese and dairy trade fair reports experts agreeing that lavender honey suits goat cheeses best, along with creamy cheeses such as Brillat-Savarin, Chaource and ewe’s-milk brousse. Paris honey sellers pair it with Crottin de Chavignol, and a Japanese honey shop with Camembert and Brie. Producers from Provence to Turkey and Japan also suggest it over yoghurt, on bread, and in tea or warm milk.

In the kitchen it is written into the rules for nougat. When nougat became the first confectionery granted a Label Rouge, in November 2022, the rules allowed only Provence PGI lavender honey in it. The Aix confectioner Roy René puts 28 percent into its white nougat, and Nougaterie André Boyer at Sault 30 percent; more on the nougat page. French beekeepers also make it into mead, among them a sparkling mead from lavender honey of the Valensole plateau, and Provence producers suggest it for glazing duck.