Hailsham is a busy Wealden market town midway between Eastbourne and the High Weald ridge, with the flat grazing marshes of the Pevensey Levels stretching away to the south and east. The Levels, a Site of Special Scientific Interest, carry extensive white clover, water mint and marsh thistle, giving colonies a long and unusual wetland flow in summer. Bramble and hawthorn flourish in the hedgerow network of the Low Weald to the north, and the Cuckmere valley corridor is within easy foraging range.
Local collectors regularly attend swarms in the old market-town gardens and orchard rows north of the town centre, in the farm buildings and drainage dyke hedgerows fringing the Pevensey Levels, in the mature sycamore and lime trees of Vicarage Lane and the Boship junction area, and in the weatherboarded and flint cottages of the surrounding villages of Herstmonceux and Horam.
Nearest BBKA-affiliated associations to help with swarm collection and local advice.
BN26 5DF· approx. 5 km
Visit websiteTN33 9QA· approx. 15 km
Visit websiteBN7 2LR· approx. 17 km
Visit websiteAssociation data sourced from the British Beekeepers Association directory via SwarmBase.
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.
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