What Is Varietal Honey—and What Makes It Different?

Walk through a good honey selection and you may find bottles labeled Clover, Orange Blossom, Basswood, Blueberry, Cranberry or Buckwheat alongside more familiar Wildflower Honey. These aren't flavors that have been added to the honey. They describe where the bees gathered much of the nectar used to make it. These are commonly called varietal, monofloral or unifloral honeys, and they offer one of the best ways to experience just how diverse real honey can be.

Honey Has a Floral Source

Every honey begins with plants. Honey bees collect nectar from flowers, carry it back to the colony and transform it into honey through a combination of enzymes, evaporation and storage inside the comb. The flowers available around the hive have a major influence on the finished honey's aroma, color and flavor. USDA honey standards recognize both unifloral honey, associated predominantly with one floral source, and multifloral honey, produced from a mixture of floral sources.

That word predominantly is important. A varietal honey doesn't mean every bee in the colony visited exactly the same kind of flower. Bees forage wherever suitable nectar is available. Instead, beekeepers place colonies where a particular plant is blooming heavily and time the harvest so that one nectar source has a strong influence on the resulting honey.

A field of blooming blueberries, a large cranberry-growing area or a strong stand of flowering linden trees can create those conditions. When the timing, weather and bees cooperate, the resulting crop can carry characteristics associated with that particular bloom.

How Is That Different From Regular Honey?

Much of the honey people encounter is multifloral, often labeled Wildflower Honey. The bees have collected nectar from many plants blooming across the landscape, sometimes over a fairly long portion of the season. There is nothing inferior about multifloral honey. In fact, a good local Wildflower Honey can be an incredible snapshot of the landscape surrounding the hives. The difference is that a varietal honey provides a more focused expression of a particular nectar source.

That is why two pure honeys can look and taste surprisingly different. One might be light and delicate while another is dark, rich or strongly aromatic. USDA research notes that differences in honey's flavor and aroma come in part from trace compounds associated with its floral sources. For people accustomed to thinking of honey as simply "sweet," tasting several varietals side by side can be eye-opening.

Varietal Honey Is Not Flavored Honey

This is probably the most important distinction. Blueberry varietal honey is not honey with blueberry flavor added to it. The character of the honey comes naturally from bees foraging heavily on blueberry blossoms. The same principle applies to cranberry, basswood, clover and other varietal honeys.

Flavored or infused honey is a different product. A beekeeper or food producer intentionally combines honey with another ingredient or flavor, such as cinnamon, vanilla, chili peppers or a fruit flavor. Those can be delicious products, but their additional flavors come from something added to the honey rather than solely from the nectar collected by the bees.

The FDA makes this distinction important from a labeling standpoint as well. A product consisting only of honey can generally be identified simply as honey, while honey containing an added flavor or other ingredient must be labeled appropriately and declare those ingredients. For example, FDA guidance uses the term “raspberry-flavored honey” for honey containing added raspberry flavor.

A Taste of a Particular Place and Time

That is part of what makes varietal honey special. It isn't simply another flavor created in a kitchen. It is the result of bees, flowers, geography, weather and timing all coming together during a particular bloom. Some years produce excellent crops. Other years, rain, drought, temperature or the timing of flowering can dramatically change what the bees are able to collect. That natural variability is part of the appeal.

When you taste a varietal honey, you're tasting more than sweetness. You're getting a glimpse of the landscape the bees were working when that honey was made.

And once you start comparing different varietals, you quickly discover something beekeepers have known for a long time: Honey doesn't have just one flavor.