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This Honeydew is from the rich, verdant beech forests of New Zealand's South Island. Here honeybees collect drops of nectar glistening like morning dew in the sun. The flavour is malty, earthly and reminiscent of beech forest. Honeydew is both high in mineral content and rich in oligosaccharides.
New Zealand Honeydew 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.
New Zealand Beech honeydew is typical of most honeydews in having a high conductivity. This arises from the nature of honedew production. An insect of the Homiptera order of insects (those with sap sucking mouthparts e.g. aphids, scale insects etc.) sucks sap from the host plant and exudes a sweet sticky nectar which is essentially slightly modified sap. This is then collected by honeybees as a nectar source and is "ripened" into honey. This pathway is quite different from that of normal flower honeys. The direct sucking of the sap, the additional insect in the production chain, and the presences of sooty moulds, all add up to an additional mineral content not normally found in flower honeys. This is indirectly measured by the ability of honeydew to conduct electricity. The average conductivity for Beech honeydew is 12.6 mS/cm with a standard deviation of 2.5mS/cm (750 records).
Honeydews are normally high in Fructose, low in glucose and have higher levels of higher sugars such as maltose . Their tendency to crystallise is also low. Beech honeydew is likewise very slow crystallizing and in fact some beech honeydews never crystallize. Another feature of New Zealand beech honeydew is the presence of oligosaccharides (complex sugars) in greater levels than average flower honeys. It has been shown that oligosaccharides are helpful in maintaining and promoting beneficial bacteria in the gut, particularly after treatment with antibiotics.
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