Buckwheat
Also known as: Fagopyrum esculentum, common buckwheat
Buckwheat (Fagopyrum esculentum) is an annual crop plant that bees visit for nectar.
Buckwheat (Fagopyrum esculentum) is an annual crop plant that bees visit for nectar. Unifloral buckwheat honey is known in Eastern Europe and Poland. It is dark: in a Polish study buckwheat honey had the darkest colour of the varieties compared, a median of 159.8 mm Pfund against 44.9 for lime.
Buckwheat blooms in summer and is one of the main summer honey flows of Ukraine's forest-steppe, together with acacia, lime and sunflower. A strong colony in a good flow collects 12-15 kg of marketable honey from it.
Why this matters to you: a dark colour points to buckwheat honey but does not prove it. In the same study 3 of 15 samples sold as buckwheat turned out to be another honey.
Facts
| Botanical origin | Fagopyrum esculentum |
|---|---|
| Season | Summer; one of the main summer flows of Ukraine's forest-steppe |
| Region | Honey known in Eastern Europe and Poland |
How it connects to Honey & beekeeping
Buckwheat → kind of → Honey plants → kind of → 🍯 Honey
Links
- What is made from it
- Buckwheat noodles
- Part of
- Honey plants
- In other topics
- Buckwheat flour, 🍜 Noodles, Soba
- Which honey it gives
- 🍯 Buckwheat honey
Frequently asked questions
What do bees take from buckwheat flowers?
Nectar, which becomes buckwheat honey. The plant, Fagopyrum esculentum, is an annual crop that blooms in summer.
Is it true that every dark honey is buckwheat honey?
No. A dark colour points to buckwheat but does not prove it; in a Polish study some samples sold as buckwheat were another honey.
In which countries is buckwheat honey best known?
Unifloral buckwheat honey is known in Eastern Europe and Poland.
Which honey flows does buckwheat sit beside in Ukraine?
In Ukraine's forest-steppe it is one of the main summer flows, together with acacia, lime and sunflower.
Is buckwheat honey light or dark?
Dark. In a Polish study it had the darkest colour of the varieties compared, well beyond lime honey.
What to read next
- 🍯 Buckwheat honey — Monofloral honey from common buckwheat nectar: the darkest of the honey types compared in a Polish study.
- Buckwheat noodles — Buckwheat noodles are noodles whose main flour is buckwheat; the best known is Japanese soba, but there are also Chinese hele and Italian pizzoccheri. Pure buckwheat has no gluten, so wheat is usually added.
- 🍜 Noodles — Noodles are long strips of dough made from wheat, rice or buckwheat flour or from starch, then boiled, fried or soaked in hot water; the oldest noodles ever found are about 4,000 years old.
- Soba — Soba is a Japanese noodle made from buckwheat flour, usually with wheat flour added: to be called soba, fresh noodles in Japan must contain at least 30 % buckwheat flour.
- Buckwheat flour — Flour from buckwheat, which is not a cereal and contains no gluten: used for pizzoccheri and Japanese soba.
Similar
Black locust · Rapeseed · Sweet chestnut · Heather (ling) · Lavender · Rosemary
Sources
- Content of Phenolic Acids as a Marker of Polish Honey Varieties. Antioxidants 2022, 11(7):1312
- Persano Oddo L. et al. (2004) Botanical species giving unifloral honey in Europe. Apidologie 35 (Suppl. 1)
- Bezpalyi I. F., Postoenko V. O., Polishchuk A. A. (2021) Biotechnological factors of bees ethology during nectar collection. Bulletin of Poltava State Agrarian Academy 2