Honey Odyssey

Bee plant, Central Europe

Fagopyrum esculentum

Moench

Buckwheat, Common buckwheat

Buckwheat is an old crop from Central Asia with white to pale red flowers, flowering from July to September in Switzerland. Honeybees prefer its short-styled flowers, which secrete more nectar. Polish buckwheat honey is dark, tea-coloured and sharp in flavour, and dark honeys like it are rich in phenolics.

Read about its honey

Fagopyrum esculentum
Photo: SAplants, CC BY-SA 4.0

What we know

How to recognise it

  • Plants are 20 to 70 cm tall and branch little or not at all.

    Confirmed fact[1]

  • Leaves are spear- or arrow-shaped, about as long as wide or longer.

    Confirmed fact[1]

  • Flowers sit in dense, stalked spikes in the leaf axils and have five white to pale red tepals.

    Confirmed fact[1]

When it flowers

  • Info Flora gives July to September as the flowering period in Switzerland.

    Confirmed fact[1]

  • The Czech Pladias database gives June to July as the flowering period.

    Confirmed fact[2]

Where it grows

  • Outside cultivation it occurs on fields and roadsides as an escape, from the colline to the montane belt.

    Confirmed fact[1]

What it offers bees

  • Buckwheat has two flower forms; in a Belgian study, short-styled (thrum) flowers secreted more nectar, with more sucrose, than long-styled (pin) flowers.

    Observation[3]

  • In the field, honeybees preferred to visit the short-styled flowers.

    Observation[3]

Honey

  • A Polish study describes buckwheat honey as dark and tea-like in colour, with a sharp, tickly and sweet flavour.

    Confirmed fact[4]

  • All commercial Polish buckwheat honeys tested contained at least 45 percent buckwheat pollen.

    Observation[4]

  • In a Polish comparison, dark honeys such as buckwheat, honeydew and heather honey had the highest phenolic content and antioxidant activity.

    Observation[5]

People

  • Buckwheat comes from Central Asia; Info Flora records it as a cultivated plant that appeared in Switzerland before 1500.

    Confirmed fact[1]

Sources

  1. Info Flora, das nationale Daten- und Informationszentrum der Schweizer Flora. Species page: Fagopyrum esculentum Moench. Description text from Flora Helvetica (2018); habitat types from Delarze et al. (2015). Accessed 19 Oct 2026. Link
  2. Pladias, Database of the Czech Flora and Vegetation. Taxon data: Fagopyrum esculentum. Accessed 19 Oct 2026. Link
  3. Cawoy, V., Deblauwe, V., Halbrecq, B., Ledent, J.-F., Kinet, J.-M. & Jacquemart, A.-L. (2006). Morph differences and honeybee morph preference in the distylous species Fagopyrum esculentum Moench. International Journal of Plant Sciences 167(4): 853-861. https://doi.org/10.1086/504924 Link
  4. Bryś, M., Kunat, M., Stawiarz, E. & Ptaszyńska, A. (2021). Physicochemical characteristics and melissopalynological analysis of commercial buckwheat honeys from Poland. Journal of Experimental Biology and Agricultural Sciences 9(2): 200-205. https://doi.org/10.18006/2021.9(2).200.205 Link
  5. Wilczyńska, A. (2010). Phenolic content and antioxidant activity of different types of Polish honey: a short report. Polish Journal of Food and Nutrition Sciences 60(4): 309-313. Link

Last checked: 20 October 2026. Every statement on this page was compared with the source it cites.