Blog: Our lightest honey with the most delicate flavour
We’re delighted to tell you that our jars of Borage Honey, made from the annual flowering herb also known as bugloss or starflower, are back in stock for the season.
Bees love borage and the flowers are some of their favourites. Borage is edible, with the flowers used to garnish summer drinks, especially Pimms. The young leaves have a cucumber flavour, ideal for salads and dressings. Because the flowers are so attractive to bees, it’s often grown next to fruit and veg to help pollinate crops.
Our Borage Honey is created with a pollination contract. We take our bees to the East of England to large-scale borage fields, where the bees collect the nectar.
It is absolutely delicious and very different to our Heather Honey. If you compare the two like wine, Borage Honey would be a light white, while Heather Honey would be a deep fruity red.
Light in colour and delicate in flavour, Borage Honey is runny and is slow to granulate – see more on honey granulation here.
Jars of Borage honey – growing the plants in your garden
If you fancy growing borage in your garden, look for Borago officinalis seeds. It is a hardy annual originally from the Mediterranean but is very easy to cultivate in the UK. It has attractive star-shaped intense blue flowers from early summer right through until the first frosts. The blooms are carried on spreading bushy plants up to 60cm high.
Sow seeds directly where it is to flower – it doesn’t like to be moved. Grow it in a border of annuals or as a gap filler as earlier plants die off later in the season.
Borage is much loved by herbalists and chefs, with many applications. It has been administered since ancient times as a medicine and even as a remedy for depression – here’s more on borage’s uses.
Our Borage Honey costs £5 for 227g or £7.25 for 340g. You’ll find it at our usual stockists throughout North-East England or buy it online at our shop.