Woodstock is a small royal market town immediately adjacent to Blenheim Palace, one of Britain's greatest baroque country houses and its parkland — a UNESCO World Heritage site. The Oxfordshire BKA is based nearby. Blenheim Park's thousands of mature lime and sweet-chestnut trees produce a magnificent June flow that dominates the local honey; the formal gardens and walled kitchen garden add diverse summer forage; the parkland lake willows contribute early pollen; and the arable farmland beyond the park boundary carries oilseed rape in spring. Woodstock's wide residential gardens and mature street trees extend the flow well into summer.
Collectors frequently attend swarms in the parkland lime avenues and ornamental stone walls of Blenheim Palace and its pleasure grounds, in the garden trees and old stone-walled properties of the Market Street and Park Street conservation area, in the Glyme valley willows and alders between Woodstock and Long Hanborough, in the walled kitchen garden and home farm buildings of the palace estate, and in the mature sycamore of the outlying villages of Bladon and Combe.
Nearest BBKA-affiliated associations to help with swarm collection and local advice.
OX20 1LP· approx. 1 km
Visit websiteOX14 1QY· approx. 19 km
Visit websiteGL56 0UN· approx. 22 km
Association 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.
