Journal · 4 min
How honey gets its flavor
It's not the bees. It's the flowers, the soil, the weather, and the week the beekeeper decided to harvest.
Bees don't flavor honey. They collect nectar and remove water. Everything you taste came from the flower — its particular mix of sugars, acids and aromatic compounds.
Which is why the same apiary in Ojai can make three completely different honeys in one year: pale, peppery sage in a wet spring, dark, figgy avocado from the groves below, and orange blossom if the hives are moved to citrus in March.
Weather matters too. A dry year means little sage bloom and almost no sage honey. Beekeepers talk about vintages, and they should.
