Oh My Honey!

Green Honey is now one of the best selling products of Palawan, Philippines. It is a natural mint-green colored honey and has the same taste like the usual natural honey we've bought from a supermarket. Palaweños (palawan locals) said that green honey can heal wounds, cough, and some illness. According to them, green honey is rare and difficult to harvest. It can only be found in a palabawen (wasp) underground hive in the forest. They dig the hive then burn it to kill all the wasps inside and also to prevent them from wasp sting. But some experts still doubt that green honey really exist.

I read an article from Inquirer.net about green honey analysis. Based from Dr. C.R. Cervancia (head of the National Center for Excellence for Bee Research and Development), “Unlike bees, which have a receptacle for honey in their bodies, wasps are unable to collect and transfer it to their nests for storage. Since they’re not known to consume algae, their production of green honey is even more unlikely." Investigators from UPLB went off to palawan searching for it in its natural environment and they confirmed that it can’t be found in nature! Chemical analysis indicates that green honey is adulterated with blue and yellow pigments.

According to Cordillera Green Network (CGN), they identified that Calliandra (Calliandra colothysus) can be a possible nectar source for "green honey" production based from the result of a research conducted by University of the Philippines, Baguio. Calliandra is a tree species which grows over 10 meters in height with leaves like ipil-ipil and upright flowers that resemble the florets of the bottle-brush tree with a yellow-green nectar which can be converted into highly viscous, deep-green colored honey.