Airborne Honey Guardians Pure Natural Honeydew New Zealand Honey 500g

Exp : 05-2025

"Honeydew" is a classification of honey that refers to honey produced by honeybees collecting nectar that is exuded from another insect such as an aphid or scale insect. It is quite common in a number of countries and the best known is honeydew from the Black Forest in Germany. World wide honeydew can be referred to variously as "forest honey", "Pine honey", "Fir honey" etc. and may sometimes be referred to by the specific species of tree producing the honeydew.

New Zealand Beech Honeydew honey is one of New Zealand's premium export honeys. It has a history of export to Europe and specifically Germany since the early 1970s. There are several honeydew producing scale insects in New Zealand inhabiting a variety of plants. However most of these are small honeydew sources or intermittent production. The beech forests of the South Island are a different story however. Two species of beech tree inhabited by two species of honeydew insect (the sooty beech scales) from the Margarodidae family produce New Zealand's largest single exported honey crop.

The beech trees are Black Beech (Nothofagus solandri) and Red Beech (N. fusca). The two insects are Ultracoelostoma assimile and U. brittini. U. brittini tends to inhabit the trunks and larger branches, while U. assimile is recorded (C.F.Morales) as favouring the upper branches and twigs, thus U.brittini is the insect most likely to be encountered by the casual observer wandering in the beech forests.

Honeydews in general are normally low in glucose and they are also lower in fructose than flower honeys. This low glucose and fructose is supplemented by higher levels of more complex sugars such as maltose, erlose and melezitose. This has the effect of reducing the tendency to crystallize. Beech honeydew is likewise very slow crystallizing and in fact some beech honeydews never crystallize.

Glucose 22.9% - SD 2.0%

Fructose 33.8% - SD 2.1%

Sucrose 0.67% - SD 0.81%

Product of New Zealand