Bee swarm in Soham? Help is a minute away.

Soham is a fenland market town in the south-east of the Isle of Ely, sitting on the edge of the chalk farmland where the black peat of the Fens gives way to the lighter arable soils stretching towards Newmarket. The River Snail and Soham Lode thread through the surrounding farmland, their banks lined with willow, reed canary grass and meadowsweet. The Great Fen restoration project, working to reconnect Wicken Fen and Holme Fen across the peat fens north and west of the town, is steadily recreating wetland forage — reed sweet-grass, hemp agrimony, purple loosestrife — while the drove roads radiating out to Wicken, Stuntney and Fordham are edged with hawthorn and field maple that carry the early-summer flow.

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.