North Somerset · Swarm collection

Bee swarm in Long Ashton? Help is a minute away.

Long Ashton is a large historic village on the western edge of Bristol, its Church Road and Long Ashton Road lined with cider-apple orchards and village gardens where the North Somerset plateau meets the Avon Gorge fringe. The village was historically associated with Long Ashton Research Station, where the National Collection of cider apple varieties was maintained; surviving orchards and allotments in the village carry a strong May blossom; and the Yanley Lane and Providence Lane hedgerows are dense with hawthorn and elder above the A370.

Postcodes we cover
BS41
Where swarms appear in Long Ashton

Typical swarm locations

Collectors attend swarms in the orchard and kitchen garden plots off Church Road and Long Ashton Road, on the lime and sycamore eaves of the older village properties around the village green, in the hawthorn hedgerows of Yanley Lane and Providence Lane above the Ashton Vale, and in the elder and bramble scrub at the Ashton Court woodland fringe to the east.

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Beekeeping associations near Long Ashton

Nearest BBKA-affiliated associations to help with swarm collection and local advice.

Association data sourced from the British Beekeepers Association directory via SwarmBase.

Forage in North Somerset

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.

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Seen a swarm in Long Ashton?

Report it in under a minute and a trained local beekeeper will arrange safe collection.