Chorley is a market town on the western edge of the West Pennine Moors, where the Lancashire plain begins to crumple into moorland. Rivington and the surrounding reservoirs lie just a few miles to the north-east, providing heather and bilberry forage in late summer, while the town's canal corridor — the Leeds and Liverpool Canal passes through nearby Adlington — carries hawthorn and bramble all the way from the Cheshire plain up towards the Pennine watershed.
Swarms in Chorley settle on the hawthorn hedgerows and elder scrub along the canal towpath, in the mature garden trees of the older Victorian terraces around Market Street and Halliwell Street, and on the sandstone walls and chimney pots of the town-centre conservation area. The allotment gardens on the Whittle Springs and Bolton Road fringes are also a regular source of calls in late May and June.
Nearest BBKA-affiliated associations to help with swarm collection and local advice.
PR1 8AP· approx. 12 km
Visit websiteWA11 8RG· approx. 18 km
Visit websiteM25 2SW· approx. 28 km
Visit websiteAssociation data sourced from the British Beekeepers Association directory via SwarmBase.
Spring opens on sycamore and hawthorn in the Ribble Valley hedges; oilseed rape is present but secondary. Lime fills June in Preston, Lancaster, Blackburn and Burnley. The Forest of Bowland and the Pennine fringe produce bell and ling heather from late July to early September — a classic Lancashire heather flow, thick and commercially migrated to. Bramble is dense; rosebay willowherb flushes Blackburn and Burnley former-mill brownfield. Ivy on stone-built villages and coastal bungalows closes the year.
More on beekeeping in LancashireReport it in under a minute and a trained local beekeeper will arrange safe collection.
