St Ives is a fishing and art town on the north-west tip of the Penwith peninsula, with a sheltered harbour on St Ives Bay and the dramatic headlands of Clodgy Point and the Island above it. The mild Atlantic climate and sheltered south-facing cottage gardens give local bees access to early flowering exotic shrubs and escapes from the town's famous sub-tropical planting, while the surrounding Penwith moorland — heather, western gorse, coastal heath and the flower-rich clifftop margins — provides a distinctive forage backdrop from June through September.
Collectors regularly attend swarms in the older cottage garden remnants and granite boundary walls of the Downalong and Back Road West conservation areas, on the coastal cliff-top heather and gorse margins of the Clodgy Point and Zennor coastal path, along the valley willows and scrub of the Stennack stream below Trevail Mill, and in the chimney stacks and granite eaves of the older fishing-town and artists' quarter properties.
Nearest BBKA-affiliated associations to help with swarm collection and local advice.
TR17 0BJ· approx. 10 km
Visit websiteTR1 2RF· approx. 31 km
Visit websiteTR2 4LG· approx. 39 km
Visit websiteAssociation data sourced from the British Beekeepers Association directory via SwarmBase.
The season opens with gorse on every headland, flowering intermittently most of the year but peaking in April. Blackthorn on the cob hedges lights up the byways; sycamore and hawthorn carry the early build; and the slow-growing pittosporum and myrtle in the sub-tropical gardens of the south coast provide unusual supplementary forage. Bramble is dominant through July, bell heather appears on Bodmin Moor and the Penwith commons in August, and the mild autumn leans on ivy and fuchsia hedging well into October.
More on beekeeping in CornwallReport it in under a minute and a trained local beekeeper will arrange safe collection.
