Pickering is a small market town at the southern edge of the North York Moors — the terminus of the North Yorkshire Moors Railway, with a castle and beck-side mills, surrounded by the Vale of Pickering arable to the south and the heather moorland of Cropton Forest and Levisham above. It occupies one of the great mid-season bee positions in North Yorkshire: oilseed rape on the Vale, then lime in the town, then heather on the Moors.
Collectors attend swarms in the castle ruins garden, on the market square lime and sycamore, in the beck-side alder and willow carr of Pickering Beck through the town centre, and on the bramble and gorse scrub of the Moors railway cutting paths above Newtondale. The Cropton Forest rides carry late-summer heather bees.
Nearest BBKA-affiliated associations to help with swarm collection and local advice.
YO17 7HD· approx. 11 km
YO62 7SE· approx. 13 km
Visit websiteYO11 3PE· approx. 28 km
Visit websiteAssociation data sourced from the British Beekeepers Association directory via SwarmBase.
The Vale opens on oilseed rape, hawthorn and sycamore; the Dales add hedgerow bramble and lime around Ripon, Harrogate and Skipton; but North Yorkshire is defined by its heather. The North York Moors and the eastern Dales give long, reliable ling flows from late July into September — still commercially worked, still producing some of the finest heather honey in the UK. Bilberry on high pasture adds a quiet early-summer supplement, and rosebay willowherb flushes every managed forestry clearing.
More on beekeeping in North YorkshireReport it in under a minute and a trained local beekeeper will arrange safe collection.
