Cambridgeshire is flat, dry, intensively farmed and — for bees — feast or famine. The Fen black soils produce enormous flows when the rape and beans are out and very little in between, which makes the county's orchards, river valleys and city gardens more important than their acreage suggests.
Oilseed rape dominates April across the Fens, followed by field beans in June and borage on some rotations in July. Around Wisbech, the old orchard country still carries apple, pear and plum blossom in spring, and colonies sited there get a fruit-blossom crop before the rape takes over. The Ouse and Cam valleys hold willow, hawthorn and a long bramble season along the droves and drains. Cambridge is the outlier: college gardens, the Backs, mature street lime and the Botanic Garden give city colonies a continuous and unusually diverse season, and honey from central Cambridge tastes nothing like honey from ten miles out in the Fen.
Fenland honey is pale, mild and sets firm; Cambridge city honey is darker, more varied and stays liquid longer.
Flowering times are typical and can shift by two to three weeks with the weather, season and altitude.
Cambridge, Peterborough, Ely, Wisbech, Huntingdon, St Neots, St Ives, March
Noticeably. City colonies work college gardens, street lime and the Botanic Garden across a long, varied season, producing a darker and more complex honey. Fen colonies work a small number of huge crops — mainly rape and beans — giving a pale honey that sets hard. Both are local; they just taste different.
Lime flowers from late June into July, and beekeepers usually take that crop off in late July. It has a distinctive fresh, slightly minty character. Ask city producers in August rather than waiting for the end of the season, as it is often sold separately from the main summer honey.
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