Honeydew
Lexikon
Honeydew is not a plant product but an animal excretion, produced by aphids, scale insects and similar insects that suck the sugary sap from the sieve tubes of trees and excrete the surplus sugar again as sticky droplets.
Honeydew is not a plant product but an animal excretion, produced by aphids, scale insects and similar insects that suck the sugary sap from the sieve tubes of trees and excrete the surplus sugar again as sticky droplets. Honey bees collect these sweet secretions just as they collect nectar and process them in the hive into honey, so-called honeydew honey, which in everyday usage is usually called forest honey.
Honeydew honey differs chemically quite markedly from pure blossom honey, because honeydew contains almost all the minerals present in the sieve-tube sap. As a result, honeydew honeys show a distinctly higher electrical conductivity and a higher mineral content than blossom honeys, and also a somewhat higher pH value, even though they contain more organic acids at the same time. Under the microscope, honeydew honey can also be recognized by typical components such as fungal elements, algal remains and small wax tubules, which are absent from pure blossom honey.
For beekeepers, honeydew is strongly weather-dependent, because the aphids that produce it only multiply heavily under certain weather conditions, so that in some years the forest nectar flow is practically absent and in other years very abundant. A common misunderstanding is to equate honeydew with a kind of plant sap; in fact it is an excretion product of insects that only becomes real honey once the bees have processed it further.