Ormskirk is a traditional market town in west Lancashire on the southern edge of the Lancashire plain, its distinctive twin-towered church and busy market sitting amid the flat, highly cultivated farmland of the Mersey-Ribble coastal plain. The surrounding market-garden and horticultural land — famous for Ormskirk's own variety of gingerbread and a long history of vegetable growing — alongside the hedgerow country around Martin Mere and the sphagnum-mosses of the Lancashire plain give local honey bees a rich lowland agricultural season.
Local collectors attend swarms in the churchyard lime and mature garden trees around the old town centre, in the chimney stacks and older roof voids of the Victorian and Edwardian streets near the railway station, in the garden apple trees and hedgerow elder on the residential roads towards Aughton, and in the hedgerow willows and rough scrub on the mosses towards Martin Mere.
Nearest BBKA-affiliated associations to help with swarm collection and local advice.
WA11 8RG· approx. 12 km
Visit websiteL37 7BS· approx. 12 km
Visit websiteL25 7TE· approx. 22 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.
