Bee swarm in Chew Stoke? Help is a minute away.

Chew Stoke is a village on the eastern shore of Chew Valley Lake, the larger of the Bristol Water reservoirs and a site of European nature conservation importance. The lake's shallows and reed margins attract wading birds, but for beekeepers the real value is the surrounding flood-meadow grazing, the old orchards behind the church and the extensive bramble on the reservoir's southern perimeter. The village sits between the limestone uplands of the Mendip Hills and the deep arable soils of the Chew valley floor.

Oilseed rape is grown extensively on the North Somerset Levels plain between Weston, Yatton and Congresbury, producing a strong April to May flow that fills supers quickly and requires timely extraction. Hawthorn is dense on the Mendip foothills hedgerows around Churchill, Winscombe and Banwell, and the Tickenham Ridge and Kewstoke Hill carry blackthorn and gorse for the earliest spring forage. Lime trees line the Victorian esplanade gardens of Weston-super-Mare and the older residential streets of Clevedon and Portishead, giving a reliable June town-centre flow. The orchard gardens of Long Ashton, Backwell and Nailsea carry traditional apple, pear and plum blossom in May. Bramble is prolific on the Mendip scarp scrub and on the regenerating scrub of old rhyne banks; white clover on the improved moor grassland and rhyne margins carries through July. Sea-buckthorn and coastal grassland at Sand Bay, Weston Sands and Clevedon Marine Lake provide a late-summer coastal supplement. Ivy on old limestone walls and the cliff-face gardens at Clevedon and Portishead closes the forage year in October.