Entry No. 03 filed 10 Oct 2026

What Is Bug-Bitten Tea?

Subject: bug-bitten tea 7 min read

Rolled bug-bitten Honey Aroma oolong leaves scattered across a hand-carved wooden tea tray engraved with tea branches

If you have browsed our oolongs, you have probably seen the words “bug-bitten” on a few of them, and maybe wondered why anyone would brag about bugs eating their tea. It sounds like a defect. But in reality, this is a highly sought-after attribute for a certain class of oolong teas.

The short answer

Bug-bitten tea is made from leaves that tiny insects called leafhoppers (Empoasca onukii, long known in Taiwan as Jacobiasca formosana, and sometimes called tea jassids) have fed on in the garden. The leafhoppers drink the sap from the young tea shoots. The tea plant reacts by building up aromatic compounds to defend itself, including the terpenes linalool and geraniol. During processing, heat turns some of the linalool into hotrienol. Together they give bug-bitten teas their famous honey and ripe-fruit sweetness (Cho et al. 2007; Fu et al. 2014; Kanu et al. 2025; Zeng et al. 2022).

Specimen No. 01

Empoasca onukii

Tea green leafhopper · actual size ≈ 3 mm

Tiny, bright green, and very picky about clean gardens.

not a mosquito!

You’ll sometimes see it searched for as “mosquito-bitten tea.” However, it is not a mosquito at all. It’s just a cute little leafhopper that prefers to snack on tea leaves instead!

How a bite turns into honey

When a leafhopper eats the leaves, the tea plant gets stressed in a very specific way. The edges curl, the leaf starts to display tiny holes, and it often turns a little yellow. Inside the leaf, the plant is busy building a chemical defense. Researchers who studied Oriental Beauty, Taiwan’s most famous bug-bitten tea, found that its main aroma compounds, such as linalool oxides, build up during processing, while many of the leaf’s stress-response genes are switched on. Later work showed that another of its aroma compounds, hotrienol, forms when heat changes linalool during the “fixing” (kill-green) step (Cho et al. 2007; Zeng et al. 2022).

1
The bite

Leafhoppers sip sap from young buds and leaves in the warm summer months.
2
The stress

Bitten leaves curl and turn yellow at the edges.
3
The defense

The plant builds up fragrant aroma compounds, like linalool and geraniol, to protect itself.
4
The craft

Oxidation and roasting turn those compounds into flavor notes of honey, burnt sugar, and caramel.

Then the tea maker takes over. Oxidation and roasting develop those compounds even further. That’s why a heavily bitten, heavily roasted tea can taste like burnt sugar, honey, and caramel, while a lightly bitten, lightly roasted one tastes more like fresh fruit and flowers.

Why bug-bitten tea is (almost always) pesticide-free

The little leafhopper bugs are extremely sensitive to pesticides. If a farmer sprays pesticides or even certain fertilizers, the leafhopper population disappears. So to make a real bug-bitten tea, the farmer has to leave the garden alone and let the insects do their work in a natural and safe environment.

That makes bug-bitten tea a perfect fit for organic growing. It also makes it more expensive: bitten leaves are damaged and yields are lower, and the farmer has to wait for the insects to show up, which mostly happens in the warm summer months in Taiwan (Kong et al. 2025).

Famous bug-bitten teas

Oriental Beauty (Dong Fang Mei Ren, 東方美人), also called Bai Hao oolong, from Hsinchu and Miaoli in northern Taiwan, is the classic. It is a heavily oxidized oolong picked in early summer, when leafhoppers are most active, and it is traditionally made from the Qing Xin Da Pan cultivar (Cho et al. 2007; learn more in What are Tea Cultivars?).
Honey black tea (Mi Xiang Hong Cha, 蜜香紅茶) from eastern Taiwan uses the same trick on a black tea.
Honey-scented oolongs like Gui Fei and our own Honey Aroma bring the bug-bitten sweetness to rolled oolongs, often with a charcoal roast on top.
Many tea lovers also credit leafhoppers for part of the “muscatel” flavor in summer-picked Darjeeling.

How bug-bitten is it?

Not every bug-bitten tea is equally bitten. On each of our product pages you’ll find a Bug-bitten level scale next to the oxidation and roast levels, so you can see at a glance how much the leafhoppers contributed. Believe it or not, the amount of bug bites can influence the flavor quite a lot: in one study of two oolong cultivars, light to moderate leafhopper damage was linked to more floral, fruity and sweet aroma compounds (Kong et al. 2025). Here are the teas in our shop, from most to least bitten:

I actually helped process the Lily of the Valley myself. The story is in Adventures in Taiwan.

Looking for more? Browse our oolong teas and the Taiwan Supreme collection.

New to bug-bitten tea? Shop the full Bug-Bitten Tea collection.

Quick answers

Is “mosquito-bitten tea” the same thing?

Yes, it is the same tea. The name is a mix-up, because mosquitoes have nothing to do with it. The insects behind the honey flavor are tiny leafhoppers.

Is bug-bitten tea safe to drink?

Yes. The leafhoppers feed on the living plant in the garden before harvest. What ends up in your tea is the leaf’s own chemistry, not the insect.

Does it taste “buggy”?

Not at all. Bug-bitten teas are some of the sweetest, most aromatic teas there are. Honey is the word you’ll hear most.

Is it the same as Oriental Beauty?

Oriental Beauty is the most famous bug-bitten tea, but not the only one. Any tea made from leafhopper-bitten leaves counts, whether it’s an oolong, a black tea or a lightly oxidized tea.

Why does it cost more?

The bites damage the leaves and lower the harvest, and the garden has to be kept pesticide-free for the leafhoppers to survive.

How do I brew bug-bitten oolong?

Each product page lists brewing details for that tea, and our brewing guide covers water temperature, steeping time and troubleshooting for all of our teas.

So the next time you see “bug-bitten” on a tea, don’t be put off. It means a tiny insect, a patient farmer and a clean garden all had a hand in your cup of tea! It’s a team effort.

References

Cho, J.-Y., Mizutani, M., Shimizu, B., Kinoshita, T., Ogura, M., Tokoro, K., Lin, M.-L., & Sakata, K. (2007). Chemical profiling and gene expression profiling during the manufacturing process of Taiwan oolong tea “Oriental Beauty.” Bioscience, Biotechnology, and Biochemistry, 71(6), 1476–1486. https://doi.org/10.1271/bbb.60708
Fu, J.-Y., Han, B.-Y., & Xiao, Q. (2014). Mitochondrial COI and 16sRNA evidence for a single species hypothesis of E. vitis, J. formosana and E. onukii in East Asia. PLoS ONE, 9(12), e115259. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0115259
Kanu, U. C., Wang, Z., Qiu, C., Wen, Q., Li, X., Qiu, D., Gan, Y., & Mao, R. (2025). Redefining the tea green leafhopper: Empoasca onukii Matsuda (Hemiptera: Cicadellidae) as a vital asset in premium tea production. Life, 15(1), 133. https://doi.org/10.3390/life15010133
Kong, B., Zhu, Q., Wei, H., Liang, Q., Shi, M., Fang, L., Yan, S., Fu, J., & Yu, W. (2025). Impact of tea green leafhopper (Empoasca onukii) puncturing on the aroma profile of high-aroma oolong tea cultivars Jinguanyin and Jinmudan. Food Chemistry: X, 31, 103036. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fochx.2025.103036
Zeng, L., Jin, S., Fu, Y.-Q., Chen, L.-S., Yin, J.-F., & Xu, Y.-Q. (2022). A targeted and untargeted metabolomics analysis of ‘Oriental Beauty’ oolong tea during processing. Beverage Plant Research, 2, 20. https://doi.org/10.48130/BPR-2022-0020