Ibstock is a former colliery and brickmaking town in north-west Leicestershire, the historic centre of the Ibstock brick company and a landscape now defined by the rapid greening of former clay pits, colliery spoil heaps and brick-yard margins into wildflower grassland and managed scrub. The Charnwood Forest heathland edge above Bardon Hill to the east gives apiaries access to bilberry, heather and gorse from July into September, a genuinely upland supplement available within a short colony-moving distance, while the hawthorn-hedged farmland of the Sence valley and the elder scrub of old industrial boundaries provide the more conventional season from spring through autumn.
Collectors in Ibstock regularly attend swarms in the bramble and rosebay willowherb of the former clay pit and colliery-site margins, in the garden privet and hawthorn hedges of the Melbourne Road and High Street conservation areas, in the hedgerow oaks and bilberry on the Charnwood Forest farmland fringe above Bardon Hill, and in chimney stacks and brick-terrace eaves of the older colliery-village properties.
Nearest BBKA-affiliated associations to help with swarm collection and local advice.
CV11 5DN· approx. 17 km
Visit websiteDE13 0BN· approx. 23 km
Visit websiteB74 2YT· approx. 32 km
Visit websiteAssociation data sourced from the British Beekeepers Association directory via SwarmBase.
Oilseed rape and field beans drive the arable flow. Sycamore and horse chestnut in the market towns build the mid-May crop; lime dominates June in Leicester, Loughborough and Market Harborough. Charnwood brings sweet chestnut, bracken and patches of bilberry; Bradgate and Belvoir parks add ancient lime and oak. Bramble is universal; rosebay willowherb fills ex-quarry ground around Mountsorrel. Ivy on the red-brick farmhouses and old pub gardens closes the season strongly.
More on beekeeping in LeicestershireReport it in under a minute and a trained local beekeeper will arrange safe collection.
