Beth Eats Local

One of the foods that I have grown to know best during my year of local eating is honey. As my only sweetener, I know honey, like… well, like the back of my hand. The back of my hand is where honey often is - that and the front of my hand, my hair, my face, my dressing gown, all over the kitchen cupboards. I have developed something of a reputation as a honey monster. My friend Caroline has a Pooh bear fridge magnet of Pooh upended in a beehive, paws sticky and a caption saying “I find it very comforting”. Never have truer words been uttered.

The difference in the taste of various honeys is truly astonishing. Eating honey is like experiencing the place that it came from. It’s like being their with the bee as it bimbles from flower to flower. Let me introduce you to a few of the friends I have made these past seven months. The first one has to be my staple, honey from the allotment. It’s made by Shaun, the guy who has the allotment behind my friend’s and who once gave me a bag full of camomile flowers. Now, allotment honey isn’t going to win any awards for showiness. It’s rough and ready – clearly the product of a mix of different pollens. Because it doesn’t undergo any heat treatment, it crystalises almost immediately. However, it’s like an old friend and I eat at least two jars of it a week.

When I can’t get any allotment honey (either from the allotment shop or from the corner shop near where I used to live which is cunningly on the way to work) I turn to Paynes bee farm to supply me with my fix. Payne’s is clearly a classier product, sweeter, more uniform – the set variety a delightful fudgy consistency. It’s good – but there isn’t a story there. I can’t taste anything in it? When I eat it, it doesn’t immediately transport me somewhere. The few spoonfuls of honey that I had from the Chelsea Physics Garden, on the other hand, take me there immediately – though I have never actually visited. My housemate Loo was in possession of one of just a few jars of honey through her mother who is well connected in the land of the medicinal garden. This honey was utterly delicate and tasted of honeysuckle and summer and quiet moments in a beautiful English garden.

While I was away in Brittany in the summer I had some local honey which blew my socks off. It has a deep, deep floral taste that was almost difficult to eat. It tasted like it should be the product of lavender or violet pollen or something else equally as strong smelling but after doing some internet research, I find that it is probably buckwheat that gives it its distinctive taste. Finally there is the Lancashire honey that my mum has found for me to eat since I have been home for Christmas. It’s heather honey and has a bitter toffee taste – it’s sparser, less rosy and fecund, more complicated – and reminds me how I feel about the north compared to the south.

Honey got serious a few weeks ago when I went into a shop that I know sells local honey and they didn’t have any. I asked why and they told me that none of their suppliers had any – it has been a terrible year for the bees. My blood sugar fell through the floor at that moment and I left the shop shaking. As I cycled home (pushing my bike part of the way up the hill because of my hypoglycemic weakness) I thought about how terrible it would be to have to live for four more months without sweetner. Then my thoughts turned to darker subjects – beemagedon and the prediction that the human race could last four years without bees. I determined to become a beekeeper as soon as possible and to do my best to encourage other people to keep bees too. Some friends and I are going to form a beekeeping working group and learn all that we can about care of the wee critters. Join us!