Honey glossary

Honey made from the nectar of flowers. It tends to be lighter in colour and usually crystallises sooner than honeydew honey. Depending on whether one plant predominates, it is either monofloral or multifloral.

The international FAO/WHO food standard for honey (CXS 12-1981, revised in 2001). It defines what honey is and sets basic quality criteria, such as a maximum of 20% water, at most 40 mg/kg of HMF and a diastase number of at least 8. It serves as a model for national rules and for international trade.

The community of bees living in one nest or hive: a single queen, tens of thousands of workers and, in summer, drones. It functions as a whole; a lone bee cannot survive for long. In summer a strong honey bee colony numbers some 30,000 to 60,000 bees, and far fewer in winter.

A vertical sheet of hexagonal cells made of beeswax, which workers secrete from wax glands on the underside of the abdomen. The cells hold honey and pollen, and the queen lays her eggs in them. Bees seal ripe honey under wax cappings; the hive box set aside for honey is called the super.

Honey sold as the bees stored it: in the sealed cells of freshly built comb that has never held brood. EU rules distinguish comb honey from chunk honey, in which pieces of comb are placed in liquid honey. The wax is edible.

Honey whose crystallisation is controlled by stirring, often after adding finely crystallised honey as a ‘seed’. The result is very small crystals and a smooth, spreadable texture. Nothing else is added; only the texture is changed.

The natural setting of honey, as glucose crystals separate from the supersaturated solution. The speed depends mainly on the ratio of fructose to glucose and on temperature: rapeseed honey sets within days, while acacia honey can stay runny for a year. Crystallisation is neither a fault nor a sign of adulteration; honey can be gently liquefied in a warm water bath.

Enzymes that bees add to honey. Invertase splits sucrose into glucose and fructose; diastase breaks down starch. Both degrade with heat and age, so their activity is a measure of careful handling; regulations require a diastase number of at least 8 (3 for honeys naturally low in enzymes).

A male bee, which develops from an unfertilised egg. Drones have no sting and do not forage; their role is to mate with a queen from another colony, after which they die. In autumn the workers drive the drones out of the hive.

The most common way of harvesting honey. The beekeeper takes the capped frames from the super, removes the wax cappings with a knife or fork and places the frames in an extractor, a centrifuge that spins the honey out of the cells. The combs stay intact and the bees can reuse them. The honey is then strained and left to settle.

The two main sugars in honey, formed when the sucrose in nectar is split. Fructose, which is sweeter and highly soluble, predominates in most honeys; glucose is less soluble and is the sugar that crystallises. EU and Codex rules require at least 60 g of the two combined per 100 g of blossom honey, and 45 g for honeydew honey.

A compound formed from sugars in honey’s acidic environment, more quickly when honey is heated or stored for a long time. Fresh honey contains very little, so HMF serves as an indicator of freshness and careful handling. The EU and Codex limit is 40 mg/kg, or 80 mg/kg for honey of tropical origin.

The EU law defining types of honey (blossom, honeydew, comb, pressed, baker’s and others), their composition and labelling; nothing may be added to honey or removed from it. Its amendment, Directive (EU) 2024/1438, part of the so-called Breakfast Directives, has applied since 14 June 2026: blends of honey from several countries must list every country of origin in descending order of weight, with the percentage of each.

A sweet liquid excreted by insects that feed on plant sap, chiefly aphids and scale insects on conifers, oaks or limes. The insects need the protein in the sap and excrete the surplus sugar. Bees gather honeydew from needles and leaves, often in summer when fewer plants are in flower.

Honey made mainly from honeydew, in Central Europe chiefly from fir, spruce and oak. It is usually dark and less sweet, with more minerals and therefore higher electrical conductivity; EU rules require at least 0.8 mS/cm. It generally crystallises slowly.

The study of pollen grains in honey under the microscope. The proportions of different pollen types indicate the botanical and geographical origin of the honey. Results are always read together with sensory and laboratory tests, because plants contribute very different amounts of pollen to honey.

Grading marks for New Zealand mānuka honey. MGO gives the methylglyoxal content in mg/kg; it forms gradually in the honey from dihydroxyacetone (DHA) in mānuka nectar. UMF is a mark of the UMF Honey Association that assesses leptosperin (an authenticity marker), DHA and HMF as well as MGO; UMF 10+ corresponds to at least 263 mg/kg of MGO. A higher number means more of these compounds, not a medicinal effect.

Honey in which the nectar or honeydew of a single plant predominates, such as acacia (black locust), lime or sweet chestnut. The variety is established by combining pollen analysis with taste, aroma and physico-chemical characteristics. The pollen share required differs between plants: black locust leaves little pollen in honey, sweet chestnut a great deal.

Honey from the nectar of several plants, none of which predominates; it is often sold as ‘wildflower’ or ‘meadow’ honey. Its flavour and colour vary with place and year. On an EU label, a ‘blend’ can also mean honey from several countries, which must then be named.

Nectar is a sugary liquid that plants secrete to attract pollinators; it consists mainly of water and sugars (sucrose, glucose and fructose). It is produced by glands called nectaries, mostly inside the flower; some plants also have extrafloral nectaries, for instance on the leaf stalks of cherries or the stipules of broad beans, and bees forage from these too. Bees carry nectar to the hive in their honey stomach, add enzymes and evaporate water from it until it becomes honey.

The intake of nectar, honeydew or pollen into the hive, and the period when plenty is available. During a main flow, for example when rapeseed, black locust or lime is in bloom, a strong colony can bring in several kilograms of nectar a day. The flow determines which honey the beekeeper harvests.

The usual scale for honey colour. A sample is matched against a wedge of amber-tinted glass and the result is given in millimetres: 0 is the lightest, and anything above 114 mm counts as ‘dark amber’. The US classification splits the scale into seven bands, from ‘water white’ (up to 8 mm) to dark amber. The figure shown in the atlas is typical of the variety, not a measurement of any particular jar.

The main source of protein and fat for the brood. Workers moisten flower pollen with nectar and pack it into pellets carried in the pollen baskets on their hind legs. The colour of the pellets reveals the plant; beekeepers can collect them with pollen traps at the hive entrance.

A sticky material that bees make from resins collected mainly from tree buds, mixed with wax. They use it to seal gaps in the hive, narrow the entrance and coat the walls. Its composition and colour vary with the local plants.

EU labels for foods tied to a particular area. For a PDO every stage of production must take place in that area (e.g. Miele della Lunigiana, Italy’s first PDO honey, registered in 2004); for a PGI at least one stage must take place there and the product’s reputation must be linked to it (e.g. Miel de Provence). The register is kept in eAmbrosia.

The only fertile female in the colony. She develops from a fertilised egg in a large queen cell and is fed royal jelly throughout her larval stage. After mating flights, on which she mates with several drones, she can lay up to around 2,000 eggs a day in season and lives for several years.

A whitish secretion from the head glands of young workers. All larvae receive it in their first days, but only larvae destined to become queens are fed it throughout their development; this difference in diet decides whether a larva becomes a queen or a worker.

A group of several hundred species of social bees from the tropics and subtropics of the Americas, Africa, Asia and Australia. Their stings are vestigial and they store honey in wax ‘pots’ rather than combs. Their honey is thinner and more acidic and is harvested in much smaller quantities; in Mexico and Central America these bees have been kept since pre-Columbian times.

The property of being gel-like at rest and thinning when stirred. It is characteristic of ling heather (Calluna vulgaris) honey, which for this reason cannot be spun out of the comb in an extractor; it is pressed or sold as cut comb. Left to stand, it sets again.

Ripe honey usually contains 15–20% water; bees cap the cells only once enough has evaporated. Regulations allow at most 20%, or 23% for heather honey. Honey with more water than that ferments easily.

The bee species behind almost all honey on the market. Originally native to Europe, Africa and the Middle East, it is now kept on every continent except Antarctica. It has many subspecies; in Central Europe the Carniolan bee (A. m. carnica) is the most widely kept. The genus Apis also includes other species, such as the Asian honey bee and the giant honey bee.

The infertile females that make up most of the colony and do all the work. Their tasks change with age: young bees clean cells, feed the brood and build comb, older ones guard the entrance and finally forage for nectar, pollen, water and resin. Summer workers live only a few weeks, winter bees for several months.