Turkish honey is real bee honey from Türkiye, the world's second-largest honey producer. The best-known kinds are pine honey from the Aegean coast, rare Anzer honey from the Black Sea highlands, and karakovan comb honey from eastern Anatolia. It is not Turkish delight, and it is not the German fairground nougat that borrows the same name.
One phrase, three meanings, endless mixed-up search results. This guide covers the honey Türkiye actually pours, then untangles the candy confusion with a side-by-side table.
What is Turkish honey, exactly?
In Türkiye, honey is simply bal, and the country harvests over 100,000 tonnes of it a year, more than any nation except China. What sets it apart is range: pine forests along the Aegean, chestnut woods above the Black Sea, and alpine meadows past 2,000 meters each fill jars with a different honey.
Much of that harvest never leaves the country; Turkish breakfasts get through a remarkable amount of it. Three names do most of the work when people talk about honey from Turkey: pine, Anzer, and karakovan.
What is pine honey?
Pine honey, çam balı in Turkish, is a honeydew honey: bees make it from the sweet secretions of a scale insect, Marchalina hellenica, that lives on Turkish red pines around Muğla and Marmaris, rather than from flower nectar. Roughly nine-tenths of the world's pine honey comes from this stretch of Aegean coastline.
How is pine honey made?
The insect feeds on pine sap and leaves sugary honeydew on the bark, which bees collect and cure in the hive the way they would nectar. The harvest runs from late summer into autumn, when hives are trucked down to the coastal forests.
Turkish pine honey is dark amber, malty, lightly resinous, and noticeably less sweet than flower honey. Low glucose means it crystallizes very slowly and often stays liquid for a year or more. Greece harvests from the same Aegean pine ecosystem, so the Greek and Turkish jars are close cousins.
Anzer, karakovan, and other honeys worth knowing
Beyond pine honey, two names define the rare end of Turkish beekeeping: a single plateau in one case, a hive design that resists shortcuts in the other.
Anzer honey
Anzer honey comes from one plateau at about 2,300 meters in Rize province, where several hundred flower species bloom in a short alpine summer, some growing nowhere else. Beekeepers harvest once a year in small amounts, which is why anzer balı routinely appears among the most expensive honeys in the world.
Karakovan comb honey
A karakovan is a traditional hive, often a hollowed log, in which bees build every comb themselves with no pre-made wax foundation. The karakovan honey we stock comes from beekeepers in the mountains of Hakkâri, in Türkiye's far southeast, who open their hives once a year in late summer and sell the honey still sealed in its comb. You will find it beside pine and highland flower honeys in our Turkish honey collection.
Chestnut and highland flower honeys
Chestnut honey (kestane balı) from the Black Sea coast is dark, low on sweetness, and finishes with a distinct bitter note that splits opinion at the breakfast table. Highland flower honeys, sold as yayla balı, are lighter and change character from valley to valley.
Is Turkish honey real honey?
Genuine Turkish honey is exactly what it says: nectar or honeydew worked by bees, nothing added. The skepticism you may have seen in the news concerns bulk commodity exports, where some shippers were caught stretching honey with sugar syrup, a problem every major producing country deals with.
The practical answer is traceability. A named region, a harvest year, and a beekeeper you can point to beat any adjective on a label, which is why we buy from named producers rather than brokers. Comb honey settles it most simply: karakovan comb arrives sealed as the bees built it, which is difficult to fake.
Turkish honey vs Turkish delight
They share a word and nothing else. Turkish delight, called lokum in Türkiye, is a soft candy cooked from starch and sugar and scented with rosewater; Turkish honey is a natural product made by bees. In Germany the phrase türkischer Honig muddies things further, naming a fairground nougat of whipped egg white, honey, sugar, and roasted nuts.
Blame Narnia for part of the confusion. The German translation of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe turned Edmund's Turkish delight into türkischer Honig, and generations of readers filed the two sweets under one name. If the candy is what brought you here, start with our guide to what Turkish delight is, or make a batch yourself with our Turkish delight recipe.
| Turkish honey | Turkish delight (lokum) | Türkischer Honig nougat | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it is | Bee honey from Türkiye's regions | Soft starch-and-sugar candy | German funfair nougat with nuts |
| Core ingredients | Nectar or honeydew, nothing else | Cornstarch, sugar, water, rosewater | Whipped egg white, honey, sugar, nuts |
| Texture | Liquid to creamy, or chewable comb | Soft, springy, jelly-like | Airy and firm, snaps when dry |
| Where you meet it | Breakfast tables across Türkiye | Sweet shops and bazaars | Funfairs in Germany and Austria |
| What Turks call it | Bal | Lokum | Nothing, it is unknown in Türkiye |
What does Turkish honey taste like and how is it eaten?
There is no single answer, which is the appeal. Pine honey tastes malty and restrained, Anzer floral and layered, chestnut dark with a bitter edge, and comb honey adds the gentle chew of wax. Sweetness varies as much as color, from pale highland jars to nearly black pine honey.
Traditionally, honey belongs to the Turkish breakfast: spooned over kaymak, a thick clotted cream, on warm bread, with black tea alongside. It is also stirred into tahini as a quick spread, or drizzled over thick yogurt.
The short version
Turkish honey means bee honey from Türkiye: pine from the Aegean, Anzer from a single plateau in Rize, karakovan comb from Hakkâri. Turkish delight is a starch candy that borrowed the name in translation, and the German türkischer Honig is a nougat. If lokum is what you came for, our traditional Turkish delight collection ships from Istanbul; the honey jars and combs travel the same road from Türkiye to your door.
Frequently asked questions
What is special about Turkish honey?
Range and terroir. One country produces honeydew pine honey on the coast, single-plateau honeys like Anzer at altitude, and log-hive karakovan comb in the east, each with its own character.
Which Turkish honey is best?
It depends on what you enjoy. Anzer is the rarest and the most expensive; pine honey suits people who find flower honey too sweet; karakovan comb is the most traditional form you can buy. Taste, not ranking, should settle it.
Which is the no. 1 best honey in the world?
There is no official ranking. Price lists are dominated by rare single-origin honeys harvested once a year, and Türkiye's Anzer honey is a fixture among them.
Does Turkish delight contain honey?
Traditional lokum does not. It is made from starch, sugar, water, and flavorings such as rosewater or lemon. A few confectioners sell honey-sweetened versions, but they are the exception; the name overlap comes from translation history, not from a shared recipe.
Why has my pine honey not crystallized?
Because it rarely does, at least not quickly. Pine honey is a honeydew honey, naturally low in glucose, and it commonly stays liquid for a year or longer at room temperature. Slow crystallization is a feature of the type, not a fault in the jar.
