Category Archives: Honeys & Jams

Our Canarian bee honey is produced with native endemic flowers grown in unpolluted areas

Palm Honey from the Canary Islands VS. Palm Honey from Chile

Canarian-Palm-Honey-vs.-Chile-Palm-Honey Canarius | Friday April 29th, 2016 |
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We know palm honey as the food product obtained from the sap (fluid carried by the conducting tissues of plants) of a number of different palm species. However, there is a clear distinction depending on their place of origin.

Palm Honey from the Canary Islands

Canarian-Palm-Honey

Canarian Palm Honey is a typical product of La Gomera island (Canary Islands, Spain), obtained from the sap of the Canary Island date palm (Phoenix canariensis). This sap is commonly known as guarapo.

It’s a type of syrup that’s obtained from the heart of the Canary Island date palm. With an intense flavour and a dark colour, it’s used in the making of many typical desserts of the Archipelago.

As for its production, the inhabitants of La Gomera climb to the top of the palm trees to get the guarapo: they must cut the top leaves to reduce layers and so that the sap can be channeled to the outside of the palm tree. Once the fluid has been collected, it’s boiled by slow cooking until obtain the palm honey.

Although this honey is only produced in La Gomera, it’s distributed across national territory and part international. Outside Spain, in central Chile, we can also find a type of palm honey: a sweet syrup kind, which is extracted from the sap of Jubaea chilensis, the Chilean palm.

Palm Honey from the Canary Islands or Chile. Which one you prefer?

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Palm Honey from Chile

Dark-palm-honeyChilean Palm Honey has been consumed in Chile since the time of the conquest (16th century). Although it’s presumed that it was known to the indigenous peoples before the arrival of the Spaniards.

This sap, like its Canarian version, is reduced with a large amount of sugar. It’s currently marketed with a specific composition: palm sap and coconut juice with added cane or corn. Chilean Palm Honey is also used as a dessert accompaniment, as well as a fruit sweetener.

This type of natural, healthy and great-tasting honey is rooted to the traditions of southwestern South America’s own food traditions; consumed by a large sector of Chileans.

Let’s talk about our Canarian Honeydew Honey

Banana-Honeydew-honey Canarius | Thursday March 17th, 2016 |
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These bees are doing something really special! They are collecting resinous secretions from below the bracts of a banana inflorescence. They will use them to make a different type of honey, the renown honeydew honey. “Honeydew” is made out of anything except flower nectar and it is different from all other honeys. It is considered healthier than typical bee honey.

Honeydew honey or ”forest honey” is a sticky liquid, rich in sugar and produced by bees from the sweet secretions of aphids or plant lice (group of soft-bodied, sap-sucking, disease vector insects) and other plant sap-sucking insects. It can be found in banana (banana inflorescences) or avocado plantations.

Other species from which honeydew honey is normally extracted from are pine, fir, oak and cork trees, along with other shrubby plants. However in Tenerife, it’s most common in the aforementioned plants.

Honeydew honey is produced in the northern part of Tenerife Island during the warmer months

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Honey-bee

Aphids or “plant lice” inject their mouthparts into the phloem (plant tissue consisting of vessels or sieve-tube elements that carry the produced sap) from which they extract the sugary liquid forced out of the end opening of the gut.

Unlike the common honey extracted by bees from flowers, which is more transparent and sweeter, honeydew honey has a much darker colour. It also tastes less sweet and solidifies with difficulty.

Honeydew honey is very healthy and often recommended. It’s a food that is high in minerals, especially in iron (because it has more conductivity than other types of honey). So it is recommended when there are deficiencies in body iron levels. The sugar levels are also lower than the other honeys.

Honeydew honey is produced in the northern part of Tenerife Island during the warmer months. This type of natural food is very popular in Europe and Turkey for its medicinal use.

On our Canarius online store we sell honeydew honey (also called forest honey) certified, in a glass jar with a net weight of 485 grams. Go ahead and try our honeydew honey. Remember it’s healthier!

Canarian honeys, some of them unique worldwide

Canarius | Thursday August 13th, 2015 |

bee-honey The exclusive plant life in Tenerife, with a great variety of endemic species, makes possible that bees can be working all year. That’s why in the island is collected many kinds of honeys. Even, some of them unique around the world. The combination among heathers, chestnuts, fruit trees or grass in Tenerife forms an endless number of species where these insects can extract nectar for making bee-honey. A natural foodstuff which has been protected by Protected Designation of Origin (PDO). In the present day, there are 13 sorts of honeys catalogued in the island. Although we are talking about a chageable number because it could appear new variants. As we have said, the Canary islands are home to a deep tradition of sweet preserves.

There are 13 sorts of honeys catalogued in Tenerife

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palm-honey On our online store, Canarius.com, we count on some honey made by, both bees and human beings. We shall select for you only the best brands, the favourites of the Canarian citizens. Right after, we will present some of them. On the one hand, an amazing product is the unique Palm honey, obtained from the sap of the endemic palm Phoenix canariensis. The main features of this palm is its big size, tapeworm or its thick trunk with more than 30 metres high. Palm Honey or Palm Syrup is an edible sweet syrup produced in the Canary Islands from the sap of the native palm tree, by tapping the tree in a sustainable way. To sum up, it is not necessary the natural work of bees. Palm Honey is thinner and darker than bee-honey. On the other hand, also we can find on our online shop the well-known Pitera bee-honey (Agave americana). It is about a syrup that is sweeter than honey and tends to be less viscous.

Wild plants of Butia capitata and also Honey and Jam production

Canarius | Monday September 6th, 2010 |
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This video shows the spectacular palm grove of Butia capitata, located in Rocha, Uruguay.

  • It shows an excting palm population in the wild
  • It gets in touch with the local people who make their living out of the  palm grove with the delicious fruits of this palm .
  • You will see tall specimens lining large circles, planted in early colonial times for cattle.
  • You will hear bad news about the lack of regeneration. All specimens are old with no juveniles.

You can buy Butia capitata and other cold-hardy palm
trees in the Palm Section of our Shop – We ship young plants to
anywhere in Europe.

(A video of jelly palms in habitat.)

What is Butia capitata, pindo palm or jelly palm?

Butia capitata is a hardy feather palm with sweet, tasty fruits, native to Brazil,
Uruguay and Argentina. It is popular in cultivation and it is the only
frost-hardy palm that can produce delicious fruits in colder
climates.

You can buy potted living plants of Butia capitata, of different
sizes from our catalog at www.canarius.com.

The Palm Honey in La Gomera

Canarius | Wednesday February 17th, 2010 |
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The Palm Honey in La Gomera

It is all about palm “honey”. See how the palm sap is collected from tall, wild palmtrees in La Gomera. Spectacular images, nice music. Subtitles in Spanish. PALM HONEY is a syrup manufactured in the island of La Gomera, one of the seven Canary Islands.

The process is as follows:

  1. The upper leaves of the palm are removed (Phoenix canariensis).
  2. The top is cut until the man gets to the soft white part that forms the “core” of the palm.
  3. A channel is placed to collect the sap produced from this “wound”.
  4. The cut must “heal” daily at dusk to mane the sap during the night. During the day, the sun’s heat would spoil the liquid.
  5. At dawn, the craftsman collects the liquid and boil it for a long time until it becomes a sweet, thick black liquid.

This is an excellent food, very good flavor and with many properties.

The palm does not die by this process and quickly recovers. Every five years or so, it can again be tapped”. The best time is summer and extraction is most popular in the areas of Taguluche, Tazo, El Ingenio and Alojera.

You can buy different types of palm honey from the Canary Islands in the Honey Section of our Shop.