Bee swarm in Ellesmere? Help is a minute away.

Ellesmere is a small market town in north Shropshire set among the glacial meres — shallow lakes left by the last ice age — that give this corner of England its lake-district character. The Mere at the edge of the town centre, the largest of the Shropshire meres, is fringed with mature lime, willow and horse chestnut, and the town stands at a junction of the Llangollen Canal and the Shropshire Union, with towpath willows extending the forage in both directions. The surrounding landscape of mossland, fen scrub, wet meadow and the sheltered hedgerow farmland of the Shropshire Plain gives local bees a distinctive water-edge forage of meadowsweet, purple loosestrife, yellow iris and willow carr. Shropshire North Beekeepers covers the Ellesmere and north Shropshire meres country.

Early sycamore and hawthorn open on the Severn Valley; oilseed rape is common on the North Shropshire plain. Lime at Shrewsbury, Ludlow and Oswestry gives a strong June flow. Bramble is dense; the mosses of Whixall, Fenn and Bettisfield contribute a patchy but distinctive late summer flow of bog rosemary and cross-leaved heath. The Long Mynd, Stiperstones and Clee Hills provide bilberry and late ling heather — still migrated to by Shropshire beekeepers in August. Ivy on the old red-brick farms and timber-framed cottages closes the year.