Borage Honey

We move our hives to the blue borage fields in late June, so that our bees can collect nectar to make Borage Honey, one of the clearest honeys you can find.
Thousands of acres of borage (borago officianalis) are grown for its small black seeds which are harvested and crushed to make borage oil, or starflower oil as it is often called on the health food shop shelves. The oil is very valuable and farmers and beekeepers have a mutually beneficial relationship; we get lots of honey and farmers get more seed as their flowers are pollinated by our bees.Borage flowering coincides with the maximum population of our hives which can reach 50,000 - 60,000 bees in each.

If July is particularly hot and humid hives can collect 80 – 100 lb of honey each from a borage field. Farmers like one hive for every acre so that in large fields there can be millions of bees from dozens of hives – all visiting flowers, each of which opens for just one day.

Borage honey, with its very distinctive colour, is a speciality of East Yorkshire where much of the borage produced in the UK is grown.