What substance drips from Yggdrasil that bees gather?

The substance that drips from Yggdrasil and is gathered by bees is honeydew.

In Snorri Sturluson’s Prose Edda, dew falls from the branches of Yggdrasil onto the earth. The text explains that this is what people call honeydew, and that bees feed on it. In this mythic description, honeydew helps connect the cosmic tree to the natural world below it.

This is not the same as sap, which would flow inside a living tree, nor nectar, which flowering plants produce to attract pollinators. Mead is an alcoholic drink made from fermented honey and water. The myth therefore uses “honeydew” as the precise answer, even though modern readers may associate the word with sugary secretions produced by insects.

Yggdrasil’s other natural phenomena are similarly mythologized. Its roots reach sacred wells, its foliage is eaten by four stags, and its branches are protected from decay when the norns pour water and mud over them. The dew falling from the tree is one more feature that keeps the world tree linked to living creatures.