St Ives is a compact riverside market town on the Great Ouse, with its distinctive medieval bridge chapel, broad market place and old corn-exchange warehouses fronting the river. The town sits on a low gravel terrace above the flood plain, and the surrounding landscape — the Ouse riverside meadows and osier carr, the mixed arable and hedgerow farmland of Norris and Houghton, and the old watermeadows of the Hemingford Greys and Hemingford Abbots parishes — gives local bees a varied and productive season from April through September.
Collectors regularly attend swarms along the Ouse riverside willows and alder carr at Quay and Waits Lane, in the mature garden trees of the Market Hill and Crown Street conservation area, on the old orchard and garden remnants of the Hemingford Road Victorian villa strip, and in the chimney stacks and eaves of the older Georgian and Victorian town-centre properties.
Nearest BBKA-affiliated associations to help with swarm collection and local advice.
PE7 3BN· approx. 26 km
Visit websiteCB22 4PB· approx. 28 km
Visit websiteCB10 1ES· approx. 40 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.
