Audlem is a picturesque market town near the Shropshire border, best known for the Audlem Flight — fifteen consecutive narrow-boat locks on the Shropshire Union Canal that drop the canal 28 metres through pastoral Cheshire countryside. The town has a fine cobbled market square, a medieval church and an easy-going character drawn from its position in the quiet pastoral country between Nantwich and Market Drayton. The surrounding landscape is one of dairy and arable farming, with hedgerow hawthorn on the field boundaries, white clover and red clover on the improved pastures, and the canal corridor providing willowherb, balsam and bramble through the summer season.
Collectors attend swarms in the lime and sycamore trees of the market square and St James' churchyard, in the older chimney stacks and stone outbuildings of the properties on Cheshire Street and Chapel Street, along the Shropshire Union Canal bank hawthorn and willowherb from Audlem Wharf southward, and in the garden fruit trees and hedges of the residential streets between the canal and the Nantwich road.
Nearest BBKA-affiliated associations to help with swarm collection and local advice.
SY133JL· approx. 14 km
Visit websiteCW11 2UR· approx. 21 km
Visit websiteCW8 2DN· approx. 27 km
Visit websiteAssociation data sourced from the British Beekeepers Association directory via SwarmBase.
Oilseed rape is heavy on the lighter soils of Mid Cheshire; hawthorn, sycamore and willow line the field margins. The mosses — Delamere, Holcroft, Risley — contribute a patchy but useful late crop with bog-myrtle and cross-leaved heath. Lime lights the streets of Chester, Nantwich, Crewe and Knutsford. Bramble is dense along every canal corridor, and a small hill heather supplement comes from the Peckforton and Bickerton ridge. Cheshire's pastoral landscape means white clover is still an honest flow, and ivy closes the year on half-timbered village walls.
More on beekeeping in CheshireReport it in under a minute and a trained local beekeeper will arrange safe collection.
