Yellow Forest Honey… we love the sweet stuff and we want to share our unique flavour of the New Forest with you, wherever you are!
Winnie the Pooh might have been on to something…there’s nothing quite like honey to sweeten the day! “If everything is honey and I am what I eat, I must be made of honey…and life is very sweet!” A.A Milne.
We certainly think so here at Yellow Forest and as we love honey, we want to share our taste of the New Forest with you… but what is so special about Yellow Forest Honey?
Sticky business…what is honey?
So the clever bees make it their mission to honey to store in their hives so they can use it as food in the winter months. They do this as the weather changes through the seasons, the months get colder and there are fewer flowers for the bees to forage nectar from.
The wonderful busy bees fly from flower to flower collecting nectar before returning to their hive and turning the nectar into honey. Bees usually only fly within a small 4-mile radius of their hive and are believed to visit up to 100 flowers on each outing.
Honey is then stored by the bees in honeycomb, which is a structure made up of lots of hexagonal cells that the bees make out of wax.
Once the hexagonal cells are filled with the nectar, any water within the nectar has to be evaporated. The bees fan the nectar with their wings to help the evaporation process and then they coat the cell with more wax to protect and preserve the honey. On average, one hive will produce around 29kg of honey per year!
Why is honey so special?
Winnie the Pooh might have been leading the way to encourage children and adults to spread a little sweetness and whilst honey is known as a natural way to sweeten foods, many studies also suggest it has great benefits for your body, too!
- Honey Contains Some Nutrients. …
- High-Quality Honey Is Rich in Antioxidants. …
- Honey Is “Less Bad” Than Sugar for Diabetics. …
- The Antioxidants in It Can Help Lower Blood Pressure. …
- Honey Also Helps Improve Cholesterol. …
- Honey Can Lower Triglycerides. …
- The Antioxidants in It Are Linked to Other Beneficial Effects on Heart Health.
What is Yellow Forest Honey like?
The single origin honey we sell Yellow Forest Honey is 100% natural, raw and unprocessed. The honey you get in your jar, is exactly how it came out of the hive, all made from wild flowers. Our bees forage on gorse, on blossoms, on heather and other wild flowers near the hives.
Whether honey is light or dark in colour depends on which time of year the bees collected the nectar and the type of plant the bees who made it took the nectar from.
For instance, bees making nectar from gorse bushes yields a darker honey. Nutritionally, there’s evidence that darker honey has less water and more antioxidants than light-coloured honey.
How to enjoy Yellow Forest Honey
Honey has so many different tastes you can enjoy compared to plain sugar, It can be sweeter or more bitter, depending on the flower source. Our honey is a blend of New Forest plants and therefore a sweet treat from the forest straight to your taste buds.
Here at Yellow Forest we are foodies. We love it on toast and crumpets, drizzled over cereal and yoghurt and mixed into our baking, especially in flapjacks or sponges.
Try it also like we do… glaze over veggies for roasting like parsnips and carrots. Use it in an Asian style dressing for fish or shake it up with mustard to dress your salads.
Simply yummy… so many things you can use Yellow Forest Honey for!
Buy your Yellow Forest Artisan Preserves; Jams, Marmalade & Honey lovingly created by New Forest artisans and ready for you to enjoy at home.
