Honey: A Picture of a Place and a Moment
LOST IN TRANSLATION: LIFE OF A JAPANESE GIRL IN ITALY
Growing up in Japan, I only really had two uses for honey: taking a spoonful when I
had a sore throat, or drizzling it over yoghurt. When it came to pancakes or French
toast, honey always seemed a little too strong, so I would choose maple syrup instead.
My criteria went no further than ‘honey or maple syrup?’, and I cannot remember ever
looking at the name of a flower when choosing a jar of honey. I wonder what kind of
flower it was.
So when I heard in my university class, The Art and Culture of Honey, that honey
could be compared by flower, much like wine, it opened the door to a whole new world
for me. Honey could also be paired with different foods.
The class was taught by Mieli Thun, a family-run honey producer based in Val di Non,
Trentino. They practise ‘nomadic beekeeping’, moving their hives across Italy in
pursuit of different flowers as they come into bloom. They have more than 60
harvesting locations. To catch the short flowering period of each particular plant, they
move the hives at night, once the bees have returned.
During the class, we heard about their journeys through Padua, Mantova and Trentino,
as well as how, on particularly hot days, they use water to keep the hives cool. It felt
very different from the beekeeping I had seen in the film Honeyland, where people live
alongside bees in one place. Behind those night-time journeys with the hives lies the
work of reading the weather and flowering seasons, while travelling and caring for
living bees.
When I used to see honey with the name of a flower written on the label, I had
never imagined that the beekeeper might actually have travelled in search of
that flower. Hearing directly about her family’s work, I also felt that I caught a small
glimpse of her own life, having travelled around the world since childhood.
Bees collect nectar from flowers. In the process, pollen sticks to their bodies. It is
carried to the female parts of other flowers, allowing pollination to take place and
plants to produce fruits and seeds.
Bees and other pollinators help support the diversity of fruits and vegetables on our
of global crop production. Without pollinators, the harvests of fruits and vegetables such as strawberries and tomatoes would be greatly affected. So would crops such as
coffee and cacao, the pasture plants eaten by cattle, and ultimately the diversity of our
diets.
At the same time, simply taking bees to where the flowers are blooming does not
necessarily mean that honey can be harvested. In a 2019 interview, Andrea
Paternoster, the founder of Mieli Thun, explained that they do not use all 60 available
harvesting locations at the same time. On the Asiago Plateau, late frosts meant that
they were unable to harvest dandelion honey for three years. In 2019, their total
production was also around 80 quintals, compared with roughly 400 quintals in an
average year. Beekeepers choose the places, move the bees and care for them. But
they cannot make the flowers bloom or freely increase the amount of nectar available
in a given year. When bees find a promising source of flowers, they communicate its
location to the rest of the colony. Even the flowers they ultimately visit are not entirely
for the beekeeper to decide. The weather of that particular year, the flowers and the
work of the bees all find their way into a single jar of honey.
The class was taught by Francesca Paternoster, who is now carrying on her family’s
work. She described honey as ‘a photograph of a particular moment in a forest,
mountain or countryside’. Hearing her say this, I realised that there was nothing
strange about honey tasting different from year to year. Even when the same flower
name appears on the label, behind it are the weather of that particular year and the
flowers that bloomed in that particular place. I found it beautiful to think that a single jar
can become a record of a particular place, in a particular season.
The differences between flowers appear not only in aroma and flavour, but also in
texture. Bees add an enzyme called invertase (sucrase) to the nectar they collect,
breaking sucrose down into glucose and fructose. They then reduce its water
content inside the hive, gradually turning it into honey. Learning that invertase is also
used in baking made the process feel a little more familiar to me. Some honeys remain
smooth and liquid, while others crystallise into a pale, creamy texture, with tiny crystals
that feel slightly crunchy on the tongue. This difference is partly related to the
proportions of glucose and fructose, which vary depending on the flower. According to
Mieli Thun, ivy honey, which is high in glucose, crystallises so quickly that the process
can begin while it is still inside the hive. Whenever honey turned pale and solid in the
jar, I used to assume that there was something wrong with the temperature of my
room or the way I had stored it. Temperature does play a role, but I had no idea that
some honeys are naturally more likely to crystallise simply because of the flowers they
come from.
Mieli Thun also provides a vocabulary for tasting these differences. A thin layer of
honey is spread in a stemmed glass, and its colour, aroma, flavour and texture on the
tongue are examined one by one.
Through its own ‘Mielicromia’, Mieli Thun describes the colour, aroma, flavour and
crystallisation of honeys from different flowers, together with information about the
plants and the places where the honey is harvested. I discovered that there was a
whole vocabulary for distinguishing between what I had previously grouped together
simply as ‘honey’. To ‘taste honey like wine’ does not simply mean serving it in a
fancy-looking glass. It means learning to connect differences in flowers and places
with what you can actually taste. My favourites were arancio and sulla.
Not Just Honey: What Else Comes from the Hive
Royal Jelly
A special food made by worker bees for larvae. All larvae are fed royal jelly shortly after
hatching, but those destined to become queen bees continue to receive it afterwards. It
reminded me of the yoghurt with royal jelly that I ate the day after I first arrived in Italy. It was
thick and creamy, with a rich, mellow flavour, yet its sweetness was delicate. I became
completely hooked on it.
Pollen
It has a slightly powdery texture when eaten, with a little bitterness and astringency lingering
at the end. The texture reminded me of something I used to drink as a child. Some studies
report that pollen contains around 20–25g of protein per 100g, which, looking at the
numbers alone, is comparable to cheese. In reality, though, we only eat it in small quantities,
so I would think of it less as a ‘source of protein’ and more as a little boost of nutrients and
flavour. We were told that it is particularly good sprinkled over pumpkin soup or yoghurt.
Propolis
Bees collect resins and other substances from plants and use them to seal gaps in the hive.
Propolis is also sold in products such as throat lozenges, sprays, supplements and tinctures.
In class, we also learnt about a method of steeping propolis in alcohol or water for
around 40 days to extract its compounds.
Mead
The one we tried in class was Mieli Thun’s sparkling mead, L’Esuberante. I had assumed
that an alcoholic drink made from honey would be sweet, but I was surprised by how
strongly I could taste the alcohol from the first sip, and by its spicy flavour. It is made by
fermenting mountain wildflower honey and water with grape must, followed by a second
fermentation in the bottle using heather honey, which lasts for 20 months. I had no idea
honey could be turned into a drink like this. I would love to try it again with savoury
dishes or cheese.
It seems a shame to treat honey only as something medicinal. Mieli Thun sees
honey as a proper ‘ingredient’ in cooking.
In the second half of the class, a chef joined us and showed us several ways of
cooking with honey. One was a vegetable dipping sauce made by emulsifying orange
blossom honey with olive oil and lemon. Another was bread topped with whipped
honey buttercream and anchovies. The last was trout marinated with citrus and orange
blossom honey. Marinating meat or fish with honey was an idea that had never occurred to me before. From now on, I can use honey when making my own dressings, too.
Honey is not simply something to add sweetness to a finished dish. It is an ingredient
to be considered alongside acidity, saltiness and the flavour of fish, asking which
flower’s honey to use. Honey also attracts and retains moisture, so when used in
baked goods, it can help slow them from drying out. Honey can affect not only aroma
and sweetness, but also texture and the way moisture is retained in food. Learning this
meant that I could no longer think of it as something to swap casually with sugar or
maple syrup.
Honey is still sugar, and this class did not make me want to eat large amounts of it
every day. But the next time I buy a jar, I want to look not only at the price, but also at
the name of the flower. And little by little, I want to start using it in my cooking, too.
Because now I know that behind every spoonful are the flowers visited by bees
and the beekeepers who work by following the seasons.
Follow our journey @movimento.metropolitano.
