Essex is the driest county in England, and that suits bees more than most people expect. Reliable summers and a heavily arable landscape make it one of the more dependable honey counties in the country, with a distinctive crop that surprises people who have only tasted supermarket blends.
Borage is the county's signature. Grown across the central and northern arable belt, it yields a water-white honey with a clean, light flavour, and in a good year an Essex colony can fill supers with it faster than the beekeeper can extract. Oilseed rape and field beans supply the earlier flows. In the west, Epping Forest brings hornbeam, oak and a long bramble season to apiaries on the London fringe, while the eastern coast is different again: the Blackwater and Dengie saltmarshes carry sea lavender in July, and a few coastal beekeepers work it deliberately. Chelmsford and Colchester both hold good numbers of urban colonies working street lime and garden forage.
Often startlingly pale — borage honey is nearly colourless and sets to a soft white. Coastal apiaries produce something rarer and more savoury from sea lavender.
Flowering times are typical and can shift by two to three weeks with the weather, season and altitude.
Chelmsford, Colchester, Southend-on-Sea, Basildon, Braintree, Halstead, Harlow, Maldon
Borage — sometimes sold as starflower — is grown as an oilseed crop across the Essex arable belt. It produces a very pale, mild honey and yields well in the county's dry summers. If you are offered a near-colourless honey by an Essex beekeeper in late summer, borage is almost certainly what you are looking at.
In small quantities, yes. Sea lavender flowers on the Blackwater and Dengie marshes in July and a handful of coastal beekeepers site hives to catch it. Volumes are tiny and it rarely reaches shops, so buying direct from a producer near Maldon or Burnham is the only realistic route.
Browse the complete UK honey directory
