The Essex Honey Show has a long history: the Essex Beekeepers' Association held its 131st annual show in 2018, and in recent years it has been staged at the Orsett Show near Grays. The association's members belong to local divisions – Braintree, Chelmsford, Colchester, Dengie & Maldon, Epping Forest, Romford, Southend and Saffron Walden – and keep hives across Essex and East London. Its website has a map of places selling members' honey.
Much of the honey here comes from farmland. Summer borage fields are one of the richest nectar sources for Essex bees, alongside orchards, hedgerows and field beans: Essex Honey keeps bees in countryside and orchard apiaries around Copford and Marks Tey, and The Naughty Beekeeper's Felsted hives have produced borage honey. Nearer London, Epping Forest Honey Co. keeps bees close to the forest, while Leigh Bees and JP's Wild Honey are in the south of the county.
Ways to buy vary. Hoyle's Honey has an honesty shop at its farm gate at Navestock Side, near Brentwood; The Natural Hive keeps apiaries at Barleylands Farm Park near Billericay; and Essex Honey, Mann's Essex Honey and others sell online. Many producers here are small beekeepers, so get in touch before calling round.
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.
Use the listing details to choose how to buy, then contact the producer before travelling.
The directory does not track live stock or harvest dates. Availability, collection, delivery, prices and seasonal varieties can change, so ask the producer to confirm what is currently available.
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