Ludlow is a medieval market town on the Teme and Corve rivers in south Shropshire, with a magnificent castle, a famous food scene and the rolling hill country of the Marches stretching in every direction. The Shropshire BKA covers the town, and the surrounding landscape — the ancient orchards and hedged pasture of the Teme valley, the heather and bilberry moorland of the Brown Clee and Titterstone Clee hills, the limestone grassland of the Mortimer Forest and the old walled gardens of the castle precinct — gives Ludlow one of the finest bee-forage landscapes in the Marches.
Collectors regularly attend swarms in the older walled gardens and lime trees of the Broad Street and Castle Square conservation areas, along the Teme and Corve riverside willows and watermeadow margins at Ludford and Bromfield, on the heather moorland margins of Titterstone Clee and the Mortimer Forest limestone grassland, and in the chimney stacks and eaves of the older medieval and Georgian town-centre properties.
Nearest BBKA-affiliated associations to help with swarm collection and local advice.
SY8 1FD· approx. 2 km
Visit websiteWR6 6JT· approx. 27 km
Visit websiteDY11 6TL· approx. 32 km
Visit websiteAssociation data sourced from the British Beekeepers Association directory via SwarmBase.
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.
More on beekeeping in ShropshireReport it in under a minute and a trained local beekeeper will arrange safe collection.
