Bee swarm in Portishead? Help is a minute away.

Portishead is a coastal town on the Severn Estuary at the mouth of the Gordano Valley, its modern marina and older Victorian town flanked by Portishead Point woodland and the limestone cliffs of Battery Point. The marina gardens, the Gordano Valley scrub and the orchard lanes of Weston-in-Gordano and Clapton-in-Gordano nearby carry a varied forage calendar from early blackthorn to late-summer bramble; sycamore and lime line the older streets of the town centre; and hawthorn hedgerows are dense on the Gordano Valley lanes inland.

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.