Burford is a medieval Cotswold market town cascading down a limestone hillside to the River Windrush, its wide High Street flanked by honey-coloured stone buildings that made it one of the great wool-trade centres of medieval England. The North Cotswold BKA and the Oxfordshire BKA both cover this area. The surrounding limestone plateau carries sainfoin on the old ridge-and-furrow pastures, field maple in the ancient hedge network, and white clover on the permanent grassland; the Windrush valley adds sallow, meadowsweet and marsh thistle in the flood-plain meadows; and the Wychwood Forest edge to the north contributes oak pollen and bramble.
Collectors are regularly called to swarms in the dry-stone garden walls and old chimney stacks of the High Street and Church Lane conservation area, in the Windrush riverside willows and alder carrs at Widford and Swinbrook, in the limestone field-boundary walls and old hedge trees of the Taynton and Great Barrington roads, and in the mature sycamore and lime of the outlying village churchyards.
Nearest BBKA-affiliated associations to help with swarm collection and local advice.
GL56 0UN· approx. 15 km
OX20 1LP· approx. 21 km
Visit websiteGL7 5PU· approx. 22 km
Visit websiteAssociation data sourced from the British Beekeepers Association directory via SwarmBase.
Spring opens on blackthorn, hawthorn and cherry plum along the stone hedges of the Cotswolds fringe and the chalk lynchets of the Vale. Oilseed rape is locally significant in Cherwell and South Oxfordshire. Beech in the Chilterns contributes to a huge honeydew-flavoured June flow some years, while lime avenues fill central Oxford and the larger market towns. Bramble, rosebay willowherb and field bean carry July; ivy along the Thames valley walls and the old college gardens closes the year.
More on beekeeping in OxfordshireReport it in under a minute and a trained local beekeeper will arrange safe collection.
