Bee swarm collection in Milton Keynes

Oilseed rape is grown extensively on the agricultural plain around Castlethorpe, Hanslope and the fields north of Wolverton, opening the main flow in late April; the Great Ouse floodplain meadows carry white clover and riverside wildflowers through June and July. The linear parks of the new city — Ouzel Valley Park, Loughton Valley, Linford Wood and Campbell Park — carry lime trees, hawthorn and bramble through a long urban season. Lime trees were planted extensively on the boulevards and parkway margins of the new city in the 1970s and 1980s and now carry a strong June urban flow across the grid squares; hawthorn and blackthorn are thick on the original field hedgerows surviving within the linear parks. Woburn Sands and Aspley Heath, straddling the Bedfordshire border, carry heather and gorse on acidic sandy soils — an unusual local forage note for a lowland Midlands city. Bramble is prolific on the Redway scrub and former railway embankments; ivy on the stone walls of the old villages closes the year.

North Bucks Beekeepers' Association (based in Central Milton Keynes) is the BBKA-affiliated association serving the city and surrounding villages. The association runs training courses and a swarm roster for the whole Milton Keynes UA and the surrounding Buckinghamshire and Northamptonshire border villages. Collectors here handle the full range from the roof spaces of the iconic grid-square estate houses to the stone outbuildings of the Great Ouse valley villages.