Torquay is the largest town of Torbay on the South Devon coast, with a mild microclimate that lets bees work from February to November and allows plants — including some sub-tropical species in Cockington Country Park — that you would not find elsewhere in Devon. The Torbay BKA covers the bay, and its collectors are experienced with the mix of hotel-ground swarms, clifftop cottage gardens and the productive mixed farmland of the Cockington valley immediately behind the town.
Collectors regularly attend swarms in the sub-tropical garden trees and old orchard boundaries of Cockington Country Park, in the lime and sycamore of the town's Edwardian seafront gardens, on the scrubby limestone and gorse cliffs of Hope's Nose and Daddy Hole Plain, and in the chimney stacks and slate roofs of the Victorian terrace streets of the town centre and outlying districts.
Nearest BBKA-affiliated associations to help with swarm collection and local advice.
TQ2 6XA· approx. 2 km
Visit websiteTQ13 0hn· approx. 15 km
Visit websitePL21 0HP· approx. 23 km
Visit websiteAssociation data sourced from the British Beekeepers Association directory via SwarmBase.
Few UK counties open as quickly. Gorse and blackthorn flowering on the cob hedges of the South Hams can carry colonies into a strong early build-up, followed by the sycamore and lime flows of the river valleys — the Exe, Teign and Dart in particular. Sweet chestnut dots Haldon and the east Devon coast; Dartmoor's bell and ling heather give a classic, thick, ambercast crop into August. On Exmoor, the north-slope bilberry and late ling heather feed smaller, darker crops still prized by local keepers.
More on beekeeping in DevonReport it in under a minute and a trained local beekeeper will arrange safe collection.
