SunnyFields Honey a-buzzed With New COVID Orders But Pleads “Don’t Go Back To Your Old Ways”

Essex-based Stacy Cronly-Dillon is the brainchild and one-woman-machine behind the local honey and home company Sunny Fields, who has seen a buzz of new orders since the start of the year, even amongst the COVID pandemic. 

Born in the early Autumn of 2018, Stacy took the flight from hobby to business and has expanded her colony to almost 30, a far cry away from the two she set out with and now oversees everything from bee-keeping to bottling from her countryside home with her husband Mark and dog Marley.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, owner Stacy saw an influx of new orders as the nation began to panic-buy. Stacy experienced new orders coming in, not only directly from the companies she was already affiliated with but with more businesses that had set up during this time, including an influx of pubs and restaurants who had to close their doors but re-opened as a refuge for their communities to purchase necessity amenities and provided a place on their shelves for her honey [£5, 255g in runny or soft set]. As the pandemic continued so did her orders. “People started looking inwards – into their local communities and into their own shopping habits and behaviours” Stacy states as the demand for her produce increased. “People were unable to leave their houses and get to the shops so they were looking at what easily sought products they could treat themselves with. Not only did it make them feel good, but also gave them the opportunity to purchase good quality products… as well as support local producers at the same time; their attitudes changed.” But as the lockdown starts to loosen and previously idle houses return to work, will the quality be enough to uphold a repeat customer?

“Part of me is optimistic”

says Cronly-Dillion who hopes she’s done enough to help people recognise what they are purchasing into. “It would be really heart-breaking if after all of this, everyone goes back to buying bulk from local supermarket and not really thinking about the provenience of where their food comes from” but knows an inevitable change of some degree will occur. “When I started Sunny Fields, it was never all about the honey. I wanted to be able to educate anyone who is willing to listen.” Which is why Stacy sells regular educational classes, offers hive sponsorship packages and has recently launched her own YouTube Channel to keep everyone’s eye on the environment and to spread her love of nature on.

As a self-proclaimed nature-lover, Stacy recollects exploring the woodlands with her Grandparents as one of her favourite childhood memories so it’s no surprise that nature would be one to find and ingrain itself into her life. But it actually wasn’t until Stacy read Santa Montefiore’s The Bee Keeper’s Daughter later in life that she fell in love with the almost poetical life of truly connecting with nature. This romanticised fluttering fantasy coincided with the Cronly-Dilion household setting up a new home in the North Essex countryside, where she still resides and houses her colonies, many of which count her first as predecessors,

“I saw my first swarm and something clicked.”

Leaving behind over a decade in brand marketing for several large food and beverage corporations, including Pepsi Co. Stacy found an all-round-calmer life among the busy buzzing bees. “I spent 10 minutes this morning just watching a Queen Bee (who can lay between 1,000-2,000 eggs a day) lay her eggs” Stacy tells us, almost minutes into our call “10 minutes longer than I should have” she quickly follows up with, “but those 10 minutes were magical” she says and can recall thousands of moments that invoke the kind of simple stillness she has created for herself… and her bees.

However it’s not all simple for Stacy who takes on the role of multiple job titles across the business as she does everything from hive to home including bee-keeping the colonies throughout the season [April/September] to completely gutting out her kitchen every year to set up manufacturing storing and warming processes to bottling the jars and everything in-between. Part of this includes working with local farmers and hobbyist vegetable growers in re-creating that natural balance between the bees and the crops. “Bee-keepers can actually get pollination contracts to help pollinate and grow [crops] from farmers” which benefit both the bees and the business in question. Beekeepers set up hives on the edge of certain fields such as rape or borage – this high-quality nectar is one the honeybee is especially attracted to and can result in a larger yield due to increased pollination. This mechanism using polynaters is as old as time but one that is at a rapid rate of decline. “It’s said that about 1/3rd of the food we consume, is pollinated… if you think about apples and pears and all the fruit trees, the blackberries and strawberries… all the crops; the beans that are in the fields; the rape that then gets turned into rape seed oil – that’s pollinated by pollinating insects, so they really are at the beginning of our food chain, and without them we’d be stuck and we would have really boring food to eat like wheat” explains Stacy who utilises her pollinated honey in her everyday cooking from slathering soft set honey on big chunks of freshly baked bread to drizzling runny honey across freshly dug slender carrots before roasting in the oven to even adding a spoon or two into a fragrantly spiced curry. The possibilities for honey are as endless as the reasons to support local hives, which is one of the reasons that spurred the creation of Sunny Field itself. “I saw that the amount of honey that we consume in the UK vs what we produced; we only actually produce 1/4 of what we consume the rest of the honey is brought in from abroad – either EU or non-EU… or a blend [of the two] and the quality of product that you then get is, this, in my opinion, syrup. You’re not getting what the bees produce” and what they do produce is this high-quality level of intricate flavour (depending on the flowers they pollinate from) that is nowhere near what most people would recognise as honey, denying them of a multitude of sensations.

From the first sweet liquid drop and its floral fruity notes, to the way a set honey melts like butter on the tongue. The breadth of flavour that can smell as fresh as grass or be infused with warming spices or the way the colour can be as clear as glass or as dark as molasses. And don’t even get us started on the crunch and chew on fresh sticky raw honeycomb. The need for beekeepers and the products they create is not only important in allowing us to keep experiencing the wonderful variants of honey but also the co-existing produce – our fruits and vegetables either grown commercially or in our own back-gardens – so remember that when you are thinking about clicking purchase on your next supermarket shop. “I know some parts of us are going to convert back to our old ways… the little shops and farmer’s market and the small producers that have been there and supported them when people needed them and I hope people are there for the small producers that need them when this is all over .”

There’s a lot Stacy doesn’t know, especially about the future but knows for sure that the life she’s created, never feels like work. “My Husband asked me this last week, as he moaned he wanted to take a holiday” as I quiz her on where she wishes she could be away from the current COVID landscape – but comes up stumped and humbly states that she just loves what she’s does and where she is and that’s all there’s bees to it.