Honey is delicious. Whether you’re using it in a bread recipe, adding it to your tea, or just enjoying a big spoonful of the stuff, honey is definitely an enjoyable food. Honey has been collected by humans for thousands of years and there are tons of different varieties of it. One of them is clover honey. But in order to get an answer to the question what is clover honey, we need to know what honey is and how bees make it.
What is honey?
Honey is the sweet, thick, and typically golden liquid produced by bees and used in a number of recipes. It is derived from nectar that bees collect with their long, hollow tongues from different flowers. Bees produce honey to store basic sugars for when food is scarce. This honey can help keep colonies strong, healthy, and vibrant.
How is honey made?
Honey is made when bees extract nectar from flower and stores it in its “crop,” which is like an extra stomach. While in the bee’s crop, the nectar mixes in with enzymes that change the chemical composition as well as the pH. This process turns the nectar into honey. Unlike plain nectar, honey is able to be stored inside the hive for times of scarcity.
Once the honey has been deposited into a honeycomb, it’s actually still quite fluid – not yet the thick substance we know to be honey. To thicken the liquid, bees will fan the honeycomb with their wings, causing excess water to evaporate. Once fully thickened, the bees will seal the combs off using a liquid from its abdomen. The honey can be stored for an incredibly long time inside of the wax-sealed honeycomb.
What is clover honey?
Now that we know what honey is and how the bees make it, we can easily answer the question: what is clover honey? As you just read, bees visit different flowers and extract nectar from them, turning that nectar into honey. So honey sold as “clover honey” is made from bees that have been situated near clover fields. You may also see lavender honey, blackberry honey, and so on. The flowers that bees are situated near can have a pretty huge impact on the flavor of the honey. For example, blackberry honey will definitely taste like honey, but with a hint of blackberry flavor as well.
Clover honey differentiates itself with its flavor. Honey made from bees situated near clover fields has a very mild, pleasing, sweet taste to it. It’s not overpowering, which makes it a good honey to use in recipes.
Related post: 10 of the best flowers for bees
