Nectar, Honeydew, Honey

Next Ill speak about the celestial gift of honey from the air.

Virgil Georgics 4

Despite millennia of honey hunting, humans have only begun to fully understood how bees make honey
in the last 150 years or so. For this reason, human language, religions and mythologies do not fully
distinguish between nectar, honeydew and honey in the same manner as modern science.
Bee and honey related words are ancient. The famous scientist Dr. Eva Crane observed that
The word honey is older than the word bee. The reason for this is that honey was the object of value, the bees
just got in the way. Therefore it is probable that the word honeydew is also older than the word bee.
IBRA, (The International Bee Research Association) has documented these words, and the lack of
precision, in 1036 essential bee related words across 25 languages.
Virgils knowledge of bees and honey is readily apparent from his writing. He distinguishes between nectar
and honey in the beehive (allowing for the needs of poetry & nuances of translation), saying ...others pack
purest honey together, and swell the cells with liquid nectar
Nectar is not honey. Less poetically, bees collect nectar (a dilute sugary fluid produced in the nectaries of
plants) add enzymes (invertase & glucose oxidase) and reduce the water content to create honey.
Cultures from around the world have ancient stories about a substance made in heaven - a food fit for the
Gods which has special properties. This is often referred to as honeydew.
He on honey-dew hath fed, and drank the milk of Paradise.
Coleridge,Kubla Khan
Honeydew has been described as dripping from the stars (Pliny the Elder) and falling from that cup of
mead and honey which is the moon. (Beck)
Ive been told of a priestess, of Massylian race, there, a keeper of the temple of the Hesperides, who gave
the dragon its food, and guarded the holy branches of the tree, scattering the honeydew and sleep-inducing
poppies.
Virgil Aeneid 4
I know an Ash standing | called Yggdrasill,
A high tree sprinkled | with snow-white clay;
Thence come the dews | in the dale that fall-It stands ever green | above Urdrs Well.
That dew which falls from it onto the earth is called by men honey-dew, and thereon are bees nourished.
The Gylfaginning, from the Norse Prose Edda (Compiled 13th century Iceland, Snorri Sturluson)
Closer in time, the Revd Charles Butler, in The Feminine Monarchy, 1609 (the first beekeeping book
written in English) writes The greatest plenty of purest nectar cometh from above; which Almighty God
doth miraculously distil out of the air, and condensated by the nightly cold into this most sweet and
sovereign nectar, which thence doth descend into the earth in a dew or small drizzling rain.
Today we know that the words from the Gylfaginning are true. Honeydew still drips stickily from the
trees, including the ash, onto our streets and pavements as ever it drips from Yggdrasill - and bees are still
nourished in this way.
Honeydew is not honey. It is created as a by-product of various species of sap sucking insects (coccids,
iachnids and aphids) which feed on trees. These tiny creatures can do what the honeybee cannot, they are
able to pierce the leaves of the tree to release the sap inside. As the sap suckers are mostly seeking protein
and dont need all the sugary liquid, this excess they excrete as honeydew. The sweet bounty is then sought
by many other insects including the honeybee.

The honeybee will return home from her foraging bringing honeydew and her sisters will work their usual
magic, turning it into honey to be capped with wax and stored in the honeycomb.
This is honeydew honey.
A number of famous and sought after types of honey are honeydew honeys and these are frequently
referred to as Forest Honey. Honeydew honey, known as Waldhonig or Honigtau Honig, from the forests
of Germany is an example and a high proportion of Greek honey contains honeydew. In France it is known
as Le miel de fort or Les miellats. In Britain, which was once known as The Isle of Honey, our bees also
make honeydew honey from many trees including Oaks, Willows, Limes and, of course, the Ash.
Honeydew honey has a different composition from blossom honey. It contains less of the
monosaccharides fructose and glucose, and up to 10% or more of triscaccharides such as melezitose. It
has a higher mineral content than nectar noney. Like nectar honey, it contains enzymes from the bees; in
addition it contains enzymes acquired from the honeydew-producing insects. (Dr. Eva Crane 1991)
Honeydew honey tends to be darker with rich distinctive flavours and has a high mineral and amino-acid
content. It has a traditional reputation of being excellent for medicinal uses and has strong antibacterial
and antioxidant properties. This is now being backed up by scientific research. A study in 2011 showed
that Slovak honeydew honey was more efficient than manuka honey (UMF 15+) against a class of
multidrug-resistant bacteria. (Institute of Zoology, Slovak Academy of Sciences)
Resistance to antibiotics is becoming a major health problem in the twenty-first century and we are
fortunate that we still have honeybees and honey to help us with this challenge. And, when we think about
honeydew honey, we are reminded of how the whole ecosystem works in harmony from tiny sap suckers
to great trees. It is all rather marvellous and encourages us to consider the importance of the natural world.
All things considered, Virgil, in 29BC was absolutely correct about that celestial gift.
Marion Malcher 18th September 2015