Coleford is the principal town of the Forest of Dean, surrounded by the ancient statutory forest — one of England's last great managed oak and sweet-chestnut woodlands. The Forest BKA covers the whole Dean district, and its collectors work a landscape that is quite unlike the rest of Gloucestershire: sweet chestnut and holly provide an unusual summer flow, bilberry carpets the open glades in May, and the Wye valley limestone grassland to the west adds marjoram and bird's-foot trefoil in June.
Collectors regularly attend swarms in the sweet-chestnut coppice and oak woodland margins around Clearwell and Milkwall, in the garden trees and old boundary walls of the town centre, along the Wye valley limestone banks at Symonds Yat and Monmouth Road, and in the chimney stacks and roof voids of the older Forest settlements of Bream and Lydney.
Nearest BBKA-affiliated associations to help with swarm collection and local advice.
GL15 6BS· approx. 8 km
Visit websiteGL18 1BD· approx. 21 km
Visit websiteBS32 4PG· approx. 23 km
Visit websiteAssociation data sourced from the British Beekeepers Association directory via SwarmBase.
The Cotswolds give early blackthorn and hawthorn on drystone hedges, with limestone grassland herbs later. The Severn Vale brings oilseed rape, horse chestnut and hawthorn in the valley pastures. The Forest of Dean is the country flavour — sweet-chestnut coppice, holly, bilberry and a late heather patch on the upper heaths. Bramble is universal; lime and sycamore dominate the June streets of Cheltenham, Gloucester and Stroud. A reliable autumn ivy flow on stone-walled churches carries hives into October.
More on beekeeping in GloucestershireReport it in under a minute and a trained local beekeeper will arrange safe collection.
