If you every have the good fortune to taste honey from the remote Philippine island of Palaui, chances are you will be savoring the flavor of an endangered tree.

That’s what scientists working on Palaui learned when they studied wild honey collected by Indigenous Agta people there. That honey, prized for its supposed medicinal qualities, bore a chemical fingerprint suggesting it came almost exclusively from a single species of tree, the endangered Pterocarpus indicus, or narra.  

Think of it as the honey equivalent of what wine connoisseurs call terroir, the idea that the specifics of a place, such as soil chemistry, shape the flavor of a bottle. While this might just sound like airy food snobbery, it turns out the terroir of honey can tell you a lot about the surrounding landscape and the health of the forest. It can even underscore the importance of conserving endangered species.

“It demonstrates how important narra trees are for local biodiversity and for the Indigenous community that depends on harvesting this honey,” said Merlijn van Weerd, an ecologist at the University of Leiden and co-author of the recent study in Scientific Reports.

You don’t have to live in the Philippines for these lessons to apply. Honey from wild hives anywhere could offer a glimpse into the surrounding ecosystem. The story of the narra-loving bees shows how that might work.  

Perhaps it should come as no surprise that bees on Palaui were drawn to the narra, the national tree of the Philippines. When it blooms, the hardwood jungle tree is festooned with sprays of orange, nectar-rich blossoms.  But its dense wood also made it a staple of the furniture industry, driving logging that wiped it out in much of the island nation before cutting the tree became illegal. Remote Palaui is one of the few places where the trees escaped that fate.

Still, van Weerd and collaborators at the University of the Philippines say they were startled that the narra tree was such a dominant feature of the island honey.

The discovery came as the scientists studied the chemical makeup of honey there to understand what it might say about the surrounding forests and to see what made this wild honey distinct. This “fingerprinting” of the honey could also enable scientists to distinguish wild, sustainably harvested honey from commercial knock-offs adulterated with cane or corn syrup, a common problem in honey marketed as being from the Philippines.

Their primary tool was a set of machines that separated the honey into its chemical constituents, then identified the individual molecules, a process known as liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry. In 2021, they collected honey from various sites on the island, then put it through this treatment to see what it contained.

One standout was an abundance of the amino acid hypaphorine. Conversations with a local source in the Agta community led the researchers to zero in on the narra as a likely source. Analysis of pollen from the tree also revealed high levels of hypaphorine. The role of this species in the honey was confirmed by the discovery of narra pollen grains in the honey.

The sensitivity of honey to the surrounding plants was reaffirmed by the discovery of caffeine in some honey gathered at hives close to a coffee farm.

“The honey reveals which plant species occur in the area: a kind of chemical fingerprint of the local flora,” said van Weerd.

For van Weerd, the results are confirmation of the importance of conserving existing forests, clarifying the link between the trees, the bees and traditional Indigenous practices.

“We are involved in reforestation projects, in which planting narra trees plays a central role,” he said. “In addition, we assist in securing land rights for Indigenous communities, enabling them to become stewards of their land and better protect it.”

The knowledge of what goes into the honey there, and elsewhere, could help make the prospect of saving endangered trees and the surrounding forests that much sweeter.

Molino et. al. “Multi‑omics and palynology of selected Philippine forest honey.” Scientific Reports. Feb. 4, 2026.

Image: ©Anthropocene Magazine