You may have heard of, or seen ‘honeydew honey’, and be wondering about the premium price and perhaps various claims you may have read about it.
What makes honeydew honey special, and how is it different from blossom honey?
Honey can be either ‘blossom honey’ or ‘honeydew honey’.
Blossom Honey
Blossom honey is made from the nectar gathered by bees from flowering plants. There are many examples, such as monofloral Manuka honey which bees make from nectar gathered from the pink flowers of Leptospermum scoparium shrub, or Tupelo honey which is made from nectar gathered by bees from the White Tupelo tree.
There are also multi-floral honeys such as those made from nectar gathered by bees from wildflowers.
Honeydew Honey
Honeydew honey is honey made from honeydew – a
sticky liquid produced by aphids and some other insects that feed on plant
sap.
Honey bees will harvest this honeydew from the bark or leaves or stems of trees and other sap-producing plants (although usually, honey bees prefer to forage on flowers, and will turn to the sweet secretions of aphids when the availability of floral nectar is limited).
Honeydew honey is sometimes labelled ‘forest honey’ or even ‘oak honey’ or ‘pine’ and ‘fir’ honey, depending on where the bees have been foraging and the primary source of honeydew.
Honeydew honeys are dark and less sweet than blossom honeys.
There are a number of pages on this website that examine the claims made for the health benefits of honey. Whilst there is robust evidence for some of the claims made for honey, there is a lack of evidence to support others.
With regard to honeydew honey, one study (Chepulis2) showed that feeding on honeydew honey caused an improvement in the immune system of rats. I can’t find any work reproducing this evidence in humans.
I am not aware of any studies that provide a comparison between the two honey types in terms of their antimicrobial activity, for example, against MRSA, or in terms of their wound healing capacity.
So the short answer is that there is no evidence to suggest that either of the honeys is superior to the other in terms of health benefits in humans.
In the end, I think this is a personal choice. What this article does not cover is flavor and aroma, which clearly is a matter of individual preference. Whether or not you view the nutrient differences as significant is another matter of opinion. I can find no compelling evidence that elevates honeydew honey over blossom honey with regard to advantage to health.
2. Chepulis, Lynne. (2007). The Effects of Honey Compared With Sucrose and a Sugar-free Diet on Neutrophil Phagocytosis and Lymphocyte Numbers after Long-term Feeding in Rats. Journal of Complementary and Integrative Medicine. 4. 10.2202/1553-3840.1098.
Did You Know?
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