Bee swarm in Cuxton? Help is a minute away.

Cuxton is a village at the foot of the North Downs on the west bank of the Medway south of Strood, where the M2 motorway crosses the river on a dramatic bridge. The North Downs chalk escarpment above the village carries dense hawthorn, blackthorn, wayfarers tree and chalk-grassland wildflowers including bee orchids and pyramidal orchids; the Medway Valley orchards on the Halling and Lower Bush slopes east of the river carry cherry and apple blossom in late April; and the river cliff and floodplain between Cuxton and Halling carries willows and riverside meadow wildflowers.

The Medway valley fruit-growing tradition — the western part of the old Garden of England — gives apiaries south of Rochester access to extensive cherry, apple, pear and plum orchards in the Burham, Halling and Snodland areas, with a concentrated late-April to mid-May blossom flow. Oilseed rape is grown on the Hoo Peninsula plateau and the river-plain fields north of Cliffe, giving a strong April flow visible from the A228. Hawthorn is dense on the North Downs scarp hedgerows above Walderslade, Blue Bell Hill and Cuxton; the chalk downland between the Medway crossing and Bluewater carries dense blackthorn, hawthorn and field scabious. The Hoo Peninsula marshes at Cliffe Pools, Northward Hill and Cliffe Creek carry sea lavender, sea purslane and coastal meadow wildflowers through July and August — a distinctive estuarine forage note. Lime trees line the Victorian residential streets of Rochester, Chatham and Gillingham; bramble and elder are prolific on the old dockyard margins and the Medway riverside scrub. Ivy on the Rochester castle walls and the older city fabric closes the year in October.