Boutique Hong Kong honey, and the hotels where you can eat it

If you visit The Ritz-Carlton Hong Kong before the end of July, the hotel's Lounge & Bar is offering a Honey Bee Afternoon Tea in collaboration with Bee's Nest Pure Honey. Among the teatime treats are traditional scones served with clotted cream and raw honey and a nod to Hong Kong with steamed milk custard topped with honey jelly - a twist on the traditional Cantonese dessert.

The honey is the first batch produced by the hotel's beehive at Bee's Nest farm near Tai Tam reservoir. In keeping with The Ritz-Carlton group's quest to support local businesses and environmental issues, the hotel has adopted a beehive there. Tours with one of the founders - Hong Kong beekeeper Gordon Yan, chef Cedric Alexandra (previously of TWG) or manager Patrick H. Zepho (ex Roka chef) - can be arranged for hotel guests.

Having set up Bee's Nest three years ago, the team now has 100 hives and is expanding to 500 next season. As well as being organic (the only certified organic honey in Hong Kong) the nectar is monofloral. Bees at their apiary pollinate from a single species of flower rather than several, resulting in a more intense taste and aroma.

The bees feast on three types of flowering plant: ivy - an evergreen tree native to Hong Kong from which a medium coloured and fragrant honey is produced, longan (which results in a dark, very sweet tasting honey) and lychee (light coloured and tangy in flavour).

Executive pastry chef Richard Long uses the longan honey to glaze walnuts on top of mini blue cheese tarts and adds it to dark chocolate pralines as he says the fruitiness works well with both. The ivy flower honey features in a custard filling for Bee Sting Cake - created by executive chef Peter Find.

"The location in Tai Tam has an abundance of ivy trees so it's very difficult for other bee farms in Hong Kong to produce a winter ivy honey as distinctive as ours," says Zepho.