Bee swarm in Antrim? Help is a minute away.

Antrim is the county town, set on the north-eastern shore of Lough Neagh — the largest freshwater lake in the British Isles and an exceptional foraging resource for bees with its vast reedbeds, willow-lined banks and swathes of meadow wildflowers. Antrim Castle Gardens, restored to their seventeenth-century layout, hold a notable collection of formal hedging and flowering borders; the Six Mile Water enters Lough Neagh through the town. Whitethorn and blackthorn hedgerows are thick on the drumlin farm lanes south of the town; sycamore and lime line the older residential streets; and oilseed rape is grown on the productive Antrim plateau farmland to the north. The Lough Neagh shoreline carries purple loosestrife and meadowsweet from July.

Blackthorn and whitethorn on deep field hedges open the year. Sycamore is the backbone of May; hawthorn follows hard. Lime lines Belfast and Ballymena streets. The Glens of Antrim contribute bell and ling heather on the high moors between Cushendall and Glenariff, a late summer crop still commercially worked. Bilberry in basalt scree hills, bramble in every sheltered townland, and a long ivy flow on white-rendered cottage walls close the year.