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Put a jar of honeycomb on the table and somebody will always ask the same question before they touch it: do you actually eat the wax? You do. Here's everything else worth knowing. The short answer Honeycomb is entirely edible, wax included. When you bite into a piece, the honey floods out straight away and you're left with a small ball of soft wax. Some people chew it for a while, like gum, and then discard it. Others simply swallow it. Both are fine. Our bodies can't digest beeswax, so it passes through unchanged. In the amounts you'd eat on toast or from a cheeseboard, that's no cause for concern. What honeycomb actually is Honeycomb is built by the bees themselves. Young worker bees produce wax from special glands on the underside of their abdomen. It emerges as tiny, thin flakes, which the bees chew, soften and shape into the familiar six-sided cells. Those cells do several jobs. The colony uses them to store honey and pollen and to raise young bees. When the honey in a cell is ripe, meaning the bees have reduced its water content enough, they seal the cell with a thin cap of fresh wax. A frame of capped comb is a frame of finished honey, packed and sealed by the bees. The hexagon isn't an accident. Mathematicians long suspected that a grid of hexagons was the most efficient way to divide a flat surface into equal cells using the least material around the edges. The mathematician Thomas Hales proved it in 1999. Bees had been working to the same answer for millions of years. Making wax is hard work for a colony, and the bees have to eat a considerable amount of honey to produce it. That's part of why comb honey has always been a treat rather than an everyday food. What does honeycomb taste like? Most honey is spun out of the comb in a centrifuge, strained and then settled before it's put into jars. The comb in a jar of chunk honey skips all of that. It has never been extracted or strained, and the honey inside is still sealed in the cells where the bees left it. The result is a fresher, more immediate aroma and a texture you don't get from any other honey. The wax itself is soft and slightly chewy, with a very mild, faintly waxy taste of its own. The honey carries the flavour. Chunk honey, cut comb and comb honey: what's the difference? The names can be confusing, so here's how they're generally used in beekeeping. Comb honey usually means a whole section of comb exactly as the bees built it, often sold in a small frame or box. Cut comb is a block cut from a frame and packed on its own, without any liquid honey around it. Chunk honey, sometimes called cut comb in jar, is a piece of comb placed in a jar and surrounded with liquid honey. Our Organic Blossom Honey with Honeycomb is chunk honey. Each jar holds roughly 120 to 150 g of comb, cut by hand from full frames, in liquid organic blossom honey. Because every piece is cut by hand, no two are quite the same size or shape. How to serve honeycomb On a cheeseboard. This is where honeycomb is at its best. Put the jar out with a knife and let people cut their own piece. The sweet honey and chewy wax work especially well against salty or strong cheeses: a good blue, a mature manchego or a washed-rind cheese. On hot buttered toast. Thick sourdough, plenty of salted butter, and a slice of comb on top while the toast is still hot. The butter and honey run together as the warmth from the toast softens the comb. On oatcakes and crackers. With or without cheese. On a breakfast board. With thick Greek yoghurt and fresh berries, or alongside figs and prosciutto. A few tips make it easier: Use a knife, not a spoon. Cut a wedge rather than trying to scoop. A spoon just squashes the cells. Serve it at room temperature. When it's too cold, the honey around the comb thickens and won't flow properly. Slice it on a board. Honeycomb leaks as soon as it's cut, which is rather the point, so give it somewhere to go. Can you cook with honeycomb? Not really, and there's little reason to. Heat melts the wax and collapses the cells, so by the time it comes out of the oven you've lost everything that made it worth buying. If a recipe calls for honey, use a liquid honey such as Organic Wildflower Honey instead. Honeycomb comes into its own as a finishing touch, added once the cooking is done: a small piece on top of warm pancakes or waffles, just before serving a wedge alongside a slice of plain cake or a scoop of vanilla ice cream broken over a bowl of porridge once it's in the bowl, not while it's in the pan In each case the warmth of the food softens the edges of the comb without melting it, and the honey runs out as you eat. How to store honeycomb Keep the jar at room temperature with the lid on. The fridge makes the comb firm and the honey stiff, and there's no food safety reason to refrigerate honey. Don't warm the jar either. Beeswax softens at fairly low temperatures, and heat will slump the comb. Over time, the liquid honey around the comb may crystallise. That's completely normal for honey. With most jars you'd stand them in warm water to make them runny again, but with honeycomb it's better to leave the set honey as it is and cut through it with a knife. For more on why honey sets and how to slow it down, see why honey goes solid. Is honeycomb suitable for everyone? Babies under 12 months. No. The NHS advises that honey in any form should not be given to babies under one year old, and that includes honeycomb. People with an allergy to bee products. Comb can contain small traces of pollen and propolis, the resin bees use to seal their hives. If you've ever reacted to bee pollen, propolis or other bee products, speak to your GP before trying it. Vegans. Honeycomb is made by bees and isn't considered vegan. Where our honeycomb comes from Our honeycomb comes from a single European producer and from certified organic beekeeping under Regulation (EU) 2018/848. That matters more for comb than for any other honey. When you eat honeycomb, you're eating the wax the bees built as well as the honey they made, so the way the hives are kept ends up on your plate. The organic rules set out what goes into those hives. The bees' forage within 3 km has to be essentially organic crops or wild vegetation. The hives must be built mainly from natural materials. And colonies must be left enough of their own honey and pollen to get through the winter. Every batch of the honey is also tested four ways for authenticity, which we explain here. If you'd rather have your honey without the comb, our guide to choosing a honey takes you through the other four in the range. Shop Organic Blossom Honey with Honeycomb

The five honeys in our range come from the same producer and the same certified organic beekeeping. Put them side by side and you'd hardly guess it. One is nearly as clear as water. Another is close to black. One smells faintly of mint, and one isn't made from flowers at all. Here's how they differ, what each one is good for, and how to choose. Why honey comes in so many colours A honey's colour depends mainly on what the bees were feeding on and the minerals that came with it. Paler honeys generally carry fewer minerals and darker honeys more. Beekeepers grade colour on a scale running from water white, through the ambers, to dark amber. Colour tells you nothing about quality. It's a reasonable guide to flavour, though: as a rule, the darker the honey, the stronger and less straightforwardly sweet it tastes. We've arranged the five below from palest to darkest. Organic Acacia Honey: pale, mild and slow to set What it is. Despite the name, acacia honey doesn't come from acacia trees. It comes from black locust, Robinia pseudoacacia, a tree whose hanging clusters of creamy white flowers open for only around two weeks in late spring. "Acacia" is simply the long-established trade name. That short flowering window is why single-variety acacia honey is scarcer than mixed-flower honey. How it tastes. Very pale in the jar, from almost colourless to light amber. The aroma is delicate and floral, and the taste is clean and mild, with no heavy aftertaste. Why it stays runny. Acacia honey is naturally high in fructose, which stays dissolved, and correspondingly low in glucose, which is the sugar that crystallises. So it stays pourable for far longer than most honeys. It will set eventually, as every honey does, but slowly. How to use it. When you want sweetness without extra flavour: in a delicate tea, whisked into a vinaigrette, or drizzled over goat's cheese or burrata. Choose it if you want a honey that tastes of honey and not much else, or one that will stay runny in the cupboard. Shop Organic Acacia Honey Organic Linden Honey: aromatic and herbal What it is. Honey from the flowers of Tilia trees. Most of Europe calls the tree linden, while in Britain it's the lime tree, and it has nothing at all to do with the citrus fruit. Linden honey, lime honey and lime blossom honey are all the same thing. How it tastes. Light amber, sometimes with a slight greenish cast. The aroma is intense, fresh and floral, with herbal and faintly menthol notes you'll notice as soon as you open the jar. On the tongue it's rich and properly sweet, with a long, aromatic finish. A tip. Those aromas are delicate and fade with heat. If you're adding linden honey to a hot drink, let the water stand for a minute or two after boiling first. How to use it. In tea, which is the classic pairing. In warm milk last thing at night. Spooned over ricotta or thick yoghurt. With a blue cheese, which it's strong enough to stand up to. And in baking, since its character survives the oven, so it works beautifully in honey cake or medovik. Choose it if you find ordinary honey a bit flat and want one with real personality. Shop Organic Linden Honey Organic Blossom Honey with Honeycomb: the showpiece What it is. A jar of liquid blossom honey with a hand-cut piece of honeycomb sitting in it, roughly 120 to 150 g of comb per jar. In beekeeping this is called chunk honey. The comb is cut by hand from full frames, so every piece is a slightly different size and shape. How it tastes. The liquid honey is light amber to amber, floral and sweet, varying a little with the season's flowers. The comb adds texture: the honey floods out as soon as you bite, and you're left with soft wax. Yes, you eat the comb. Wax and all. Our honeycomb guide answers every question people ask about it. How to use it. On a cheeseboard, where it looks the part and tastes even better next to blue cheese or manchego. On hot buttered toast or sourdough. Cut it with a knife rather than scooping with a spoon. Choose it if you want something to put on the table rather than keep in the cupboard, or you're looking for a food gift that people remember. Shop Organic Blossom Honey with Honeycomb Organic Wildflower Honey: the everyday jar What it is. A multifloral honey, meaning the bees drew on whatever happened to be flowering around the hives that season rather than a single crop. Change the weather, the site or the time of year and the honey changes with it. Why no two batches are identical. Large commercial packers blend that variation away to produce the same house flavour year after year. Our wildflower honey isn't blended to a standard, so a batch after a wet spring tastes a little different from one after a dry summer. How it tastes. Amber, floral and rich on the nose, with gentle fruity and herbal notes underneath. Sweet and well balanced, with a finish that lingers without overstaying. How to use it. This is the jar that lives by the kettle. Porridge, toast, pancakes and Greek yoghurt. Marinades for chicken or halloumi with lemon and thyme. Dressings, where it balances sharp vinegar better than a very mild honey. And baking, where it has enough character to come through. If you're swapping honey for sugar in a recipe, use about three-quarters of the amount, cut the other liquid slightly and lower the oven by around 15°C, because honey browns faster than sugar does. Choose it if you want one honey that does a bit of everything well. Shop Organic Wildflower Honey Organic Forest Honey: dark, malty and not from flowers What it is. Forest honey is honeydew honey, and it isn't made from nectar at all. Sap-sucking insects such as aphids feed on trees, take what they need and leave behind a sugary residue on the leaves and bark. The bees collect that instead. Same bees, same hives, entirely different raw material. How we know it's genuine. Honeydew honey is much richer in minerals than blossom honey, and minerals conduct electricity. Under the EU Honey Directive, 2001/110/EC, honeydew honey must have an electrical conductivity of at least 0.8 mS/cm. Our forest honey is specified at 1.00 mS/cm. Our acacia honey, for comparison, measures around 0.15. How it tastes. Dark amber to almost black. Woody, resinous and malty rather than flowery, with a faintly caramelised depth. It's noticeably less sweet than the other four, and thick and dense in the jar. How to use it. Think of it as closer to black treacle than to ordinary honey. On sourdough with plenty of salted butter. With mature cheddar or aged pecorino. In glazes for ham, roast roots or barbecue sauce. In gingerbread, parkin or rye bread. And in coffee, where its maltiness works better than a delicate honey would. Choose it if you think you don't like honey. It's the one most likely to change your mind. Shop Organic Forest Honey Which honey for what: a quick guide For tea: Linden if you want aroma, Acacia if you want sweetness and nothing else For coffee: Forest For a cheeseboard: Blossom Honey with Honeycomb, or Forest with a strong hard cheese For porridge and toast: Wildflower For baking: Wildflower for everyday bakes, Forest for anything dark and spiced For dressings and drizzling: Acacia For a honey that stays runny: Acacia For people who don't like honey: Forest As a gift: Blossom Honey with Honeycomb A few common questions Is darker honey better than lighter honey? No. Colour reflects the plants the bees fed on and the minerals that came with them, not quality. Dark honeys are stronger in flavour; pale ones are more delicate. It's a matter of taste. Which honey stays liquid the longest? Acacia, because of its high fructose content. For the full explanation, and what to do when a honey does set, see why honey goes solid. Are all five honeys organic? Yes. All five are certified organic under Regulation (EU) 2018/848, from a single European producer, and every batch is tested four ways for authenticity. Here's what those tests involve. Can babies have honey? No. The NHS advises that honey should not be given to babies under 12 months old. That applies to every honey, including the honeycomb. Is honey suitable for vegans? No. Honey is made by bees and isn't considered vegan.