Cockermouth is a handsome market town at the confluence of the Cocker and Derwent, birthplace of William Wordsworth and gateway to the north-western Lake District. The rivers here are fringed with willows, alder carr and hawthorn scrub that sustain bees from the first spring flows; sycamore fills the ghyll woodlands above the town; and the surrounding farmland — the pasture and hedgerow fields of the Lorton Vale and the fertile Derwent valley floor — provides hawthorn, white clover and bramble through the summer. The Cockermouth Beekeepers' Association has been active in the town for many decades.
Collectors regularly attend swarms in the mature garden trees and walled orchards of the Main Street and Castlegate conservation area, along the Derwent and Cocker riverside willows and alder carr at Gote Lane and Waterloo Street, on the gorse and bilberry margins of Setmurthy Common above the town, and in the chimney stacks and eaves of the older Georgian and Victorian terraces around Sullart Street and Lorton Street.
Nearest BBKA-affiliated associations to help with swarm collection and local advice.
CA13 0AU· approx. 1 km
CA12 4NT· approx. 17 km
CA24 3HZ· approx. 20 km
Visit websiteAssociation data sourced from the British Beekeepers Association directory via SwarmBase.
Spring comes late here; blackthorn and hawthorn only really get going in mid-May. Sycamore is important around every fell farm; bramble and white clover carry midsummer. The defining flow is fell heather — bell from late July, ling into September — across the central Lakes, the Howgills and the north Pennines, still widely migrated to for one of the best heather crops in England. Bilberry in the oakwoods adds a small early-summer supplement. Limestone pavement herbs on the Morecambe Bay edge and ivy on whitewashed cottages finish the year.
More on beekeeping in CumbriaReport it in under a minute and a trained local beekeeper will arrange safe collection.
