North Somerset · Swarm collection

Bee swarm in Winscombe? Help is a minute away.

Winscombe is a large village at the mouth of Winscombe Valley on the Mendip foothills, where limestone pasture, ancient coppice woodland and the dry valley of Sandford Quarry give bees access to some of the richest Mendip-edge forage in North Somerset. The village churchyard limes, the hawthorn on the Shute Shelve Hill lanes and the bramble of Barton Combe are all productive; and the Strawberry Line greenway — converted from the old Cheddar Valley Railway — threads through orchard and meadow from Yatton to Axbridge.

Postcodes we cover
BS25
Where swarms appear in Winscombe

Typical swarm locations

Collectors attend swarms on the limestone garden walls and church eaves of the older village centre around Woodborough Road and The Square, in the orchard and paddock gardens of the Sandford and Sidcot lanes, on the hawthorn hedgebanks of Shute Shelve Hill above the village, and in the Strawberry Line greenway meadow and bramble scrub between Winscombe and Sandford.

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Beekeeping associations near Winscombe

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.

More on beekeeping in North Somerset
Nearby towns

Swarm help in neighbouring towns

Seen a swarm in Winscombe?

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