Sherborne is a small cathedral and school town in north Dorset on the Yeo, with a magnificent golden-limestone abbey, two castles and the mixed farmland and orchards of the Blackmore Vale stretching north into Somerset. The Sherborne BKA is based in the town, and the surrounding landscape — old orchards, hedged pasture, hawthorn-thick lanes and the limes of the Abbey Close — gives local bees a classic mixed-agricultural season from blackthorn through to late ivy.
Collectors regularly attend swarms in the lime trees and old stone boundary walls of the Abbey precinct and Half Moon Street conservation area, in the orchard and garden remnants of the Pageant and Tinneys Lane areas, along the watermeadow willows of the Yeo below the town, and in the chimney stacks and golden-limestone roof voids of the older town-centre properties.
Nearest BBKA-affiliated associations to help with swarm collection and local advice.
DT9 6FF· approx. 4 km
Visit websiteBA20 1HN· approx. 8 km
Visit websiteBA9 8JG· approx. 16 km
Visit websiteAssociation data sourced from the British Beekeepers Association directory via SwarmBase.
The chalk downs around Blandford and Shaftesbury bring hawthorn, field maple and a modest oilseed rape flow. The Dorset heath country — Studland, Arne, the Purbeck basin — gives an unusually long heather season (bell heather from late June, then ling) combined with the gorse bloom on the sandy soils. Lime lines the market towns; bramble is dense on the old commons. The late coastal ivy flow on Portland and the cliffs of Lulworth carries hives into autumn.
More on beekeeping in DorsetReport it in under a minute and a trained local beekeeper will arrange safe collection.
