Buckwheat honey is a dark honey produced when bees forage heavily on flowering buckwheat. Its malty, earthy flavor can be much more assertive than pale clover-type honeys.
Northeast notes
Buckwheat flowers in Maine from roughly mid-August into early September when planted on the schedule recommended by UMaine, giving it a late-season relationship with pollinators.1
A useful distinction
“Buckwheat honey” names the nectar source, not an ingredient blended into finished honey. As with other varietal honeys, the label describes what the bees were primarily visiting.
Footnotes
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University of Maine Cooperative Extension, “Maine Forage Facts: Small Grains Crops,” accessed July 17, 2026. ↩