Source · producer

Provence lavender apiary

Plateau de Valensole, Haute-Provence, FR

Placeholder apiary entry — the Valensole plateau in Haute-Provence blooms violet for six weeks in July and August. Beekeepers move hives from rosemary and thyme in the spring to lavender in midsummer; the resulting honey is pale, slightly granulated, and unmistakably perfumed with the flower.

The honey that smells like the field it came from. Provence lavender honey is a miel monofloral — bees foraged predominantly on one species — and a reminder that honey is, fundamentally, a record of the local flora at the moment the bees collected it. The same hive in October would yield a different honey, darker and more herbaceous.