Is tree honey slow to granulate?

Recently, someone mentioned that honey from trees is much slower to granulate than honey from other sources. I had never heard this before and it intrigued me. I was fascinated because my own honey never granulates—at least I’ve never seen it granulate—and I have some that is over seven years old. I know my honey comes largely from tree nectar, but I never made the connection.

Honey granulates when the nectar is high in glucose and low in fructose. The more fructose the nectar contains, the less likely the honey is to granulate. I wondered if tree nectar naturally has more fructose. So I decided to informally research this claim to see how true it is.

What I found is kind of a mess. Nearly everyone agrees on the granulation rate of certain species. For example, many folks assert that honey from tupelo, black locust, gallberry, black sage, sourwood, avocado, and heather hardly ever granulates. This is true. On the other hand, honey from aster, clover, oilseed rape, alfalfa, cotton, blueberry, mangrove, and star thistle granulates quickly.

Most on the “never granulates” list are trees, and most on the “quick to granulate” list are not. But the gray areas are immense. I would say gallberry, black sage, and heather are shrubs—not exactly trees. But so are blueberry and cranberry. A mangrove can be a tree or a shrub. So although trees and shrubs seem to have many characteristics in common, nectar composition is not one of them.

Even more confusing: I found raspberry, cranberry, blackberry, sunflower, and fireweed on both “quick to granulate” and “slow to granulate” lists. The different experience by different people is probably the result of the nectar being mixed with other nectars in their local area—something which can give the honey very different characteristics. A pure sample would probably result in a different experience. For example, given it is in the aster family, I would imagine that pure sunflower honey would be very quick to granulate.

Others on the “slow to granulate” list were yellow box (bush), borage (herb), milkweed (herb) and grape (woody vine). On the “quick to granulate” list were orange blossom (tree), dandelion (herb), mesquite (shrub ), apple (tree), blue curl (evergreen herb), and rosemary (woody perennial). My own non-granulating honey comes mostly from maple, bitter cherry, cascara, American holly, salal, snowberry, and blackberry—which are trees, shrubs, and woody vines.

It’s hard to conclude much from this brief summary, but I would say that if your honey comes chiefly from trees you have a better chance of getting slow-to-granulate honey than if it comes mostly from annuals, herbaceous perennials, or vines. But once again, nature has proven she doesn’t believe in absolutes.

Rusty
HoneyBeeSuite

Tupelo trees in Arkansas. Flickr photo by Linda Tanner.