'It tastes like ivy smells' U.K. bees make special ivy honey after mild winter
Quince Honey Farm in South Molton, U.K. is abuzz about the limited edition ivy honey, made from the winter-flowering plant.
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Bees on flowering ivy plant. (Wikimedia Commons )
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As It Happens5:21"It tastes like ivy smells": U.K. bees make special ivy honey after mild winter
Honey bees in South Molton, U.K. have made a rare kind of honey from ivy this winter, thanks to unseasonably mild temperatures.
It's definitely ivy, you can really taste it.- Ian Wallace, Quince Honey Farms
"We've never had a crop of ivy honey before," Ian Wallace of Quince Honey Farms tells As It Happens host Carol Off. Normally, the bees lay dormant in the winter, choosing not to venture out of their hives. But this year was uniquely warm, allowing bees to collect pollen from the winter-flowering ivy.
The limited edition ivy honey is proving popular at Quince Honey Farms in South Molton, U.K. "We've had people from all over the country asking for it." (Quince Honey Farms)
"You know sometimes, if you walk past ivy when it is in flower, and you get a gust of wind, and you get that strong, slightly acidic smell?" asks Wallace. "It's like that, but absolutely delicious."
The rare honey is proving popular with customers, "We've had people from all over the country asking for it," Wallace says. "I'm eating quite a bit of it myself. I don't want it all to go to everyone else, we've got to get some perks from this job."
To hear more about how this special batch came-to-be, take a listen to our full interview.
