An award that gives us the opportunity to take a closer look at one of the honeys that best reflects our land
Our Forest Flower Honey has received a Gold Bee Award at the Mieli dei Parchi della Liguria 2025 competition.
We were very pleased to receive this recognition and wanted to share it, without turning it into something to celebrate at all costs. For us, above all, it is an opportunity to look more closely at this honey and understand what its analytical values can tell us, beyond its flavor and aroma.
A honey born from the woodland
Forest Flower Honey comes from an area where wild blooms are intertwined with extensive chestnut groves and mixed woodland. It is precisely this diversity that makes it difficult to describe this honey with a single definition. It does not tell the story of one particular flower, but of an entire environment: the succession of plants blooming throughout the season, the woodland itself and everything the bees encounter there.
The result is an intense, complex honey that changes from year to year, because what happens around the hives is different every season.
PHYSICOCHEMICAL ANALYSIS
MOISTURE
17.3%
HMF
2.6 mg/kg
ACID.
12.2 meq/kg
EC
1.00 mS/cm
What the analysis tells us
As part of the competition, the honey also underwent physicochemical analysis at the Regional Laboratory of the Liguria Region. The sample showed a moisture content of 17.3%, free acidity of 12.2 meq/kg, electrical conductivity of 1.00 mS/cm and an HMF value of 2.6 mg/kg.
Taken on their own, these numbers may not mean very much. But some of them can help us better understand the honey inside the jar.
The 17.3% moisture content is below the general 20% limit established for honey and is an important parameter for its stability and shelf life.
The HMF value is also particularly low, at 2.6 mg/kg. HMF is a substance whose concentration tends to increase over time and when honey is exposed to heat. The general limit for honey is 40 mg/kg, so the value found in our sample is very low.
Finally, the electrical conductivity of 1.00 mS/cm is an interesting figure when trying to understand the character of our Forest Flower Honey. Electrical conductivity is related, among other factors, to mineral content and varies considerably depending on the origin of the honey. A value such as the one found in our sample is consistent with the intense character of a honey closely connected to a woodland environment.
Behind the award, a honey worth discovering
A Gold Bee Award does not change the way we see this honey, nor does it suddenly make it different from what it was before the competition.
It does, however, give us another opportunity to tell its story.
Behind the color, aroma and flavor of a honey are many elements that usually remain invisible: the blooms of a particular season, the land explored by the bees, weather conditions and characteristics that only laboratory analysis can reveal.
And perhaps this is what interests us most about the recognition we received: discovering that even numbers, in their own way, can tell the story of the woodland this honey comes from.