Ramsey is a small fen market town built on a slight rise of the peat — an ancient abbey town that once stood on an island in the Great Fen. Restored fen habitats are returning around the town's edges as part of the Great Fen project, bringing back wetland flora including hemp agrimony, marsh thistle and meadowsweet that supplement the dominant oilseed rape and field-bean arable flows of the surrounding farmland. The drove roads and dyke banks still carry good hedgerow hawthorn into May, and willowherb and bramble sustain the summer flow.
Collectors regularly attend swarms in the garden trees and churchyard yews of the Abbey Church and Great Whyte conservation area, along the dyke-bank scrub and willow margins of Ramsey Hollow and the Great Fen restoration zone, on the hedgerow-lined drove roads towards Ramsey St Mary and Bury, and in the eaves and chimney stacks of the older brick cottages in the fen lanes around the town.
Nearest BBKA-affiliated associations to help with swarm collection and local advice.
PE7 3BN· approx. 13 km
Visit websitePE9 4HZ· approx. 36 km
Visit websiteCB22 4PB· approx. 41 km
Visit websiteAssociation data sourced from the British Beekeepers Association directory via SwarmBase.
Oilseed rape is the dominant early flow across the Fens; field beans add to the picture in June. Hawthorn, blackthorn and cherry plum fill the farm hedges that still mark every drove road. The lime avenues of Cambridge, Ely and Huntingdon provide a concentrated urban flow, and willow, hemp agrimony and purple loosestrife along the Great Ouse and Cam sustain hives well into July. Late summer brings sainfoin on chalk field margins and a modest heather crop on Thetford Heath gravels on the county edge.
More on beekeeping in CambridgeshireReport it in under a minute and a trained local beekeeper will arrange safe collection.
