The quality of Greek honey remains as stunning today as it has been throughout time. There is good reason: Greece’s countryside continues to yield an unrivaled variety of vegetation with the attendant of pollens.

Most of the plants from which Greek bees gather are wild, sun-baked until their flavors and tints maximize. In most other honey-producing countries, bees feed off cultivated monocultures. Greek honey also undergoes a minimum of processing, therefore retaining all the nutrients, flavor, and texture dictated by nature.

Honey takes its name from what bees feed off, hence thyme honey, blossom honey, pine honey, orange blossom honey, chestnut honey, etc. Beekeepers move their hives from place to place, slope to slope, field to field, in order to reap the rewards of the season and provide fodder for their hives.

In the incredibly rich and varied Greek flora, there are at least 120 different flowering plants and trees that provide fodder for Greek bees, and theoretically just as many different types of honey, but only a handful are commercially viable. Among them: dark, thick pine and fir honey, orange-blossom and flower-blossom honey, heather, and, of course, arguably the best known of all, thyme honey.

Thyme honey is unique to Greece although more than 60% of Greek honey comes from pine. Almost all Greek honey, around 80%, comes from bees that forage off wild, not cultivated, plants.