> Is there any way to tell what flowers HONEY comes from, other than looking at the pollen?

Firstly for the pollen side we have a project in Australia currently looking at seeing if it is possible to identify honey by the pollen source.  See http://www.rirdc.gov.au/research-project-details/custr10_HBE/PRJ-009770  The researcher gave a presentation at a recent conference I was at and he said he could not identify the specific floral source i.e. what tree it came from but from the various other pollens from plants that flower at the same time it looks possible to be able to authenticate Australian honey as those other plants are specific to Australia.  It will even be possible to get the source down to a region as many of these associated plants are specific to only one part of Australia.  Many of our Eucalypts do not produce pollen in quantity so the presence of that pollen can be small and hence not reliable.

Many years ago we had work carried out to see if measuring volatiles in the honey could be  way of identifying honey.  This was not successful due to the wide variation. 

Taste is one way of having a good idea of what the honey is with many having distinctive tastes.  But there again there can be variations.  With leatherwood, whilst it has a distinctive flavour, they tell us that when it comes in fast the flavour is not as intense as when it comes in slow.

Trevor Weatherhead
Australia

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