Spalding is a market town on the Welland in the South Holland fen, famous for its tulip fields and set in the flattest and most intensively cultivated landscape in England. The Lincolnshire BKA covers the town, and the surrounding landscape — the bulb-field tulips and narcissus of the fen spring, the oilseed rape on the dark peat fen soils, the dyke-side willowherb and loosestrife margins in summer and the old walled garden remnants of the town centre — gives local bees a distinctive and productive fen-agricultural season.
Collectors regularly attend swarms in the older garden and canal-bank remnants of the Market Place and Holland Road conservation areas, along the Welland and Coronation Channel riverside willows and dyke-side margins, on the bulb-field and tulip-farm headlands between Moulton and Cowbit, and in the chimney stacks and eaves of the older Georgian and Victorian market-town properties.
Nearest BBKA-affiliated associations to help with swarm collection and local advice.
PE21 6NW· approx. 23 km
Visit websitePE9 4HZ· approx. 24 km
Visit websitePE7 3BN· approx. 28 km
Visit websiteAssociation data sourced from the British Beekeepers Association directory via SwarmBase.
Oilseed rape is the defining early Lincolnshire flow, enormous in scale across the Fens and Wolds. Field beans, hawthorn and blackthorn carry the hedgerows. Lime and sweet chestnut line the Georgian streets of Lincoln, Stamford and Boston. Bramble is universal, and rosebay willowherb flushes disused airfields and dismantled rail corridors. The Lincolnshire Wolds, though not high, carry sainfoin and chalk grassland herbs. Coastal buckthorn at Gibraltar Point and ivy in the Wolds villages finish a long year.
More on beekeeping in LincolnshireReport it in under a minute and a trained local beekeeper will arrange safe collection.
