Bee swarm in Upchurch? Help is a minute away.

Upchurch is a village on the high ground behind the Medway estuary, between Rainham and Lower Halstow, with a medieval church and a traditional pub on the village green. The surrounding farmland carries oilseed rape and field beans on the heavy brick-earth soils, and the hedgerow hawthorn is dense on the lanes towards the coast; the riverside orchards and market gardens that historically defined this part of north Kent have retreated, but remnant planting survives in several village gardens. Medway Beekeepers Association covers the area.

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.