A Road Trip Taste-Testing the Best Florida Honey

Last Updated on February 27, 2024

Looking for the best Florida honey? Traveling through Florida’s back roads is one of the most delightful pleasures of living in the state and taste-testing honey is a perfect motivation.

Whether it’s the stillness of pine Flatwoods, an oak-shaded scrub, a less-discovered beach, an aqua blue spring, a scenic river, or remote wetlands – all offer a range of discovery that connects us to our natural and authentic surroundings.

While meandering through the state, especially on the back roads, you may notice stacks of boxes in open fields and pastures.

You may spot them sitting amongst swaths of wildflowers, between rows of citrus, along a river’s edge, or scattered throughout Florida’s pine forests.

The boxes, similar to a chest of drawers, are beehives. The drawers are trays for bees to create their honeycomb.

Beekeepers place the hives wherever there are flower blossoms, berry bushes, and fruit tree flowers because where there are flowers, there are bees. And where there are bees, there is honey.

Honey, that sweet and mysterious elixir of the gods, the end result of a bee’s laborious work, invites us to find Florida in a special way – through nature and agriculture.

Local honey is sold at farms, roadside stands, and farmer’s markets throughout the state.

Tasting pure, raw honey is one of the many benefits of touring Florida’s rural countryside.

Florida’s Amazing Bees

The fantastic bee creates sweet and golden liquid while serving as nature’s essential pollinator.

But how do bees make honey? Honey begins with bees collecting nectar and pollen from various flowers, berries, and fruit blossoms.

A bee will fly from flower to flower, land on the blossoms, and use its tube-like tongue to suck out the nectar. It then places the nectar in its “honey” stomach, one of two stomach pouches within its tiny body.

After transporting the nectar back to the hive, it then passes the substance it has gathered onto the worker bee.

The worker bee adds important enzymes to the nectar, storing it in honeycombs and sealing it in with wax. The bees fan their wings to hasten the process before the watery nectar begins to evaporate.

When one part of the honeycomb is complete, the bees move to an adjacent area.

In the case of commercial hives, they move on to another tray ready for their handiwork. Beekeepers collect the honeycomb trays from the hives, scrape the golden liquid from the wax seal, and replace the trays in the hive.

Many different honey varieties are available throughout the state. It depends upon what grows in the region and what is in bloom at the time.

Naturally, Florida is famous for the orange blossom varietal, but there are so many others — wildflower, gallberry, saw (and sabal) palmetto, and what many consider the “Cadillac” of honey, Tupelo.

Other popular honey varieties include blackberry, blueberry, avocado, mangrove, sea grape, mango, and even Brazilian pepper.

The flavor and color of honey depend on the bees’ nectar source. Generally speaking, lighter-colored honey is milder in flavor, while darker more amber honey packs a more robust taste. Even within specific varietals, the color can vary.

Honey Taste-Tasting

During some recent Florida travels, we began tasting and collecting “regional” and varietal honey from artisan beekeepers. 

For fun, we invited friends and family over for an Authentic Florida “honey tasting” celebration.  There was a lot of sampling and discussion.

Besides satisfying our sweet tooth, the most surprising revelation became a new awareness of honey varieties and the range of distinct flavors.

Most tasters thought Florida was limited to orange blossom or a generic type of standard honey. After tasting the varietals our conversations turned to the new favorites we had discovered.

Honey, like anything, is a matter of taste. Here were the top favorites of our tasters:

Orange Blossom Honey

Orange Blossom is Florida’s “sunshine-soaked” signature honey and is famous for its light, fruity, floral, and distinct citrus flavor.  The sweet fragrance of orange blossoms fills the grove while the bees are collecting its nectar.

Orange Blossom honey can be found as far north as Ocala, continuing south, particularly in counties with large citrus production.

Tupelo Honey

This honey is a specialty from the Florida Panhandle, Tupelo Honey. The Tupelo gum tree grows along the Apalachicola and Chipola River basins, blooming on average three weeks per year.

Beehives are placed on elevated platforms along the river’s edge. Its light golden color laced with a sweet yet distinctive flavor is often a choice of diabetics due to its low glycemic index. It’s slow to granulate, if at all.

Wildflower Honey

Wildflower honey is found throughout the state. Where there are flowers with nectar that bees crave, there is wildflower honey. The taste is less sweet but has a “tangy taste.”

It is reported to have medicinal value (if grown within 50 miles of the hive) and to suppress allergies, especially the bothersome hay fever.

It’s a complex honey because it comes from a wide variety of flowers and the color can range from golden to dark amber.

Florida Palmetto Honey

Saw Palmetto is the oldest known honey in Florida and is used by native Indians. The saw palmetto plant grows throughout Florida and is distinguished by white flowers and brown berries.

This honey often has a sweet, fruity caramel taste with a rich and robust flavor.  Also, it’s thought to help in addressing men’s prostate health.

Gallberry Honey

Gallberry honey is derived from the six-foot-tall evergreen holly bush (called inkberry) that blossoms with white flowers and blackberries, often found in pine Flatwoods and wetlands.

The gallberry flavor is fruity and thick with an amber color and greenish hue and does not usually granulate.

Gallberry is similar to the Tupelo that grows in wet conditions, and can be found all over Florida, but is more predominant in north Florida.

Classic Varietals

Our tasters seem to like the classic varietals the best, particularly the Saw Palmetto honey. However, the avocado honey possessed a distinct full-bodied buttery taste, and blackberry honey was to no surprise, distinct with a blackberry flavor.

Blueberry honey had a similar fruity taste but with a distinct, yet mild blueberry flavor. This variety has become extremely popular with consumers and can be found on most grocery shelves.

But if you want honey from Florida blueberries, check the label or find it at your local farmers market. Because of its popularity, beekeepers report they find it hard to keep blueberry honey in stock.

And what about Brazilian pepper honey? This tree is an invasive species that Florida horticulturalists detest. It has red peppercorn-like berries and grows in coastal areas.

Bees are attracted to its small clusters of white flowers and the honey is slightly peppery but sweet, with a light consistency and a mild flavorful taste.

One more mention: Pine Island, near Fort Myers, specializes in mango honey. As you would imagine, it is fruity, bold, and rich. Just another fabulous Florida honey!

Honey Tips

A few tips for your Florida honey: Store honey at room temperature and buy it locally. Why local honey? There’s a difference between local “raw” honey and processed honey.

Raw honey comes “fresh from the hive” and contains bee pollen and essential enzymes – the way nature intended it to be.

Natural honey is rich in antioxidants, amino acids, and digestive enzymes. However, most commercial honey is often blended, pasteurized, or cooked therefore eliminating its beneficial enzymes, nutrients, and pollens.

Honey is a natural ingredient for replacing sugar in recipes and has been used for generations. Many believe it cures everything from the common cold to arthritis. It is also reported to be excellent first aid for dressing wounds and burns.

We can thank our Florida bees for this gift. Nature never lets us down especially when we tend to it the way the bees care for Florida.

Places to Buy Florida, Local, Raw Honey

Many beekeepers sell at local farmers’ markets, at their farms, on roadside stands, or in small retail outlets.

Authentic Florida readers have shared their favorite places to buy local, raw honey, listed below (Place in the comments below your favorite place to buy local honey and we will add to the list.)

North Florida

The Florida Panhandle is one of the richest sources for buying Florida’s honey, particularly Tupelo honey.

Driving along the roads in the counties of Wakulla, Franklin, Liberty, Gulf, and Calhoun will no doubt yield a jar of prized tupelo honey.

Here are some more places to purchase the delicious nectar in North and Northwest Florida:

• Apalachicola Bee Company, Apalachicola
• Full Moon Farms, Monticello
• Karma Acres, Callahan
• Bundrich Honey Farms, Crestview
• Thomas Honey, Lake City
• Dixie Woods, Chiefland
• Barker’s Bees Chipola Country Honey, Altha
• L.L. Lanier & Son’s Tupelo Honey, Wewahitchka
• New Leaf Market, Tallahassee
• Skipper’s Honey, Live Oak
• East Hill Honey Co., Pensacola

Central Florida

For Central Florida’s raw honey, try:

• Struthers Honey, Bok Tower Gardens, Lake Wales
• Pasco Honey & Queen Kathleen, Dade City
• Winter Park Honey, Winter Park
• Allison’s Apiaries, Ocoee
• Three Beez Honey Farm, St. Cloud
• Mrs. Mangos & Company, The Flavored Honey Store, Rockledge
• Riverview Apiaries, Lake Panasoffkee
• Bee Happy Aviary, Crystal River
• Taste of Freedom Farm, Largo
• S & S Apiaries, New Smyrna Beach
• Curtis Honey Company, LaBelle
• Buzz on In (Gruwell Apiary), Ft. Pierce
• Nelsons Family Farms, Ft. Pierce
• Loveland Groves, Edgewater
• Winter Garden Honey, Winter Garden

South Florida

For local honey in South Florida, try:

• Robert is Here, Homestead
• Marando Farms, Ft. Lauderdale
• Flamingo Road Nursery, Davie
• Sunshine Animal Hospital, Clearwater (veterinarian is a beekeeper)
• Turner Family Honey and Bees, 4 Bees Herb Farm, My Sweetest Honey (Detweiler’s) Sarasota
• Walker Farms Honey, Ft. Myers
• Shoppes at Vanderbilt Farmers’ Market, Naples
• McCoy’s Sunny South Apiaries, Loxahatchee

Note About Bees

All is not well in the bee universe. Colonies are disappearing and scientists are not sure why.

Termed Colony Collapse Disorder, this most recent threat to the honeybee is a huge problem. Since we often think of bees as the source of honey, did you know that they also serve a critical and necessary role as pollinators for our food crops?

Without pollinators such as bees, our citrus, berry, melon, and vegetable crops would not yield fruit.

However, researchers have identified several factors that contribute to the disorder and continue working on both the cause and solution to this potentially catastrophic problem.

Learn more about how you can help save the Florida bees: The Buzz on Saving Florida’s Honey Bees.

Florida Honey Movie

If you are a film lover, then you might also want to check out a 1997 movie called Ulee’s Gold.

The film stars Peter Fonda as a Florida Tupelo honey beekeeper shot in Apalachicola and Port St. Joe.

Van Morrison’s song, Tupelo Honey is featured in the movie.