Bee swarm in Alfriston? Help is a minute away.

Alfriston stands in the Cuckmere Valley at the foot of the South Downs, its medieval market cross and the fourteenth-century Clergy House — the first building acquired by the National Trust — drawing visitors along the South Downs Way from Eastbourne to the Seven Sisters. The sheltered chalk valley and the escarpment above offer a classic Downland forage calendar: early blackthorn on the steep scarp faces, hawthorn and field maple along the Cuckmere watermeadows, bramble on the scrub slopes of High and Over, sainfoin where chalk-grassland restoration schemes have seeded it, and a productive ivy flow on the old flint church walls and the hedgerows through October. The Cuckmere estuary marshes to the south attract unusual coastal forage species within short flight of the village.

The early flow starts on blackthorn and wild cherry, before hawthorn lights the hedges of the Weald. Late May to July carries the colonies on sweet chestnut around Heathfield, bramble across every common and hedge bank, and — most characteristically — heather on Ashdown Forest from late July into August, giving the dark, jelly-like Ash Down heather honey some members still cut-comb for show. Ivy closes the year on sheltered sandstone lanes and the tall old churchyards of Rye, Lewes and Battle.