Settle is a limestone market town in Ribblesdale on the Settle–Carlisle railway line, at the southern end of the Yorkshire Dales National Park. The Wharfedale BKA covers the area, and the landscape around it is classic Dales limestone country — the wildflower-rich limestone pavements and grassland of Malham Cove and Attermire above the town, the ash-hazel woodland of the Ribble gorge at Stainforth and Horton, the hay-meadow and hedgerow hawthorn of the riverside enclosures, and the spring-turf herbs of the Great Scar Limestone plateau — giving local bees a botanically rich upland forage season unlike any lowland county.
Collectors regularly attend swarms in the stone chimney stacks and cottage eaves of the Shambles and Market Place conservation area, in the ash and sycamore of the Ribble riverside walks at Settle and Langcliffe, on the limestone pavement scrub and hawthorn edges on the Scaleber and Victoria Cave access tracks, and in the dry-stone walled gardens and orchard remnants of the Victoria Street and Upper Settle streets.
Nearest BBKA-affiliated associations to help with swarm collection and local advice.
BD23 6QX· approx. 21 km
Visit websiteBD20 8PE· approx. 23 km
Visit websiteLA5 9SE· approx. 33 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.
