Frome is a post-industrial market town on the Frome river at the Somerset-Wiltshire border, with a vibrant arts and food culture and a strong allotment and community garden movement that has made it a centre of urban beekeeping in the county. The Frome BKA covers the town and the surrounding limestone farmland. The Mendip Hills to the west carry excellent grassland flora; the mixed arable and pasture of the Frome valley adds bramble, clover and sycamore through summer.
Collectors regularly attend swarms in the allotment and community garden hedges of the Catherine Hill and Trinity area, in the garden trees and old stone boundary walls of the Gentle Street and Cheap Street conservation area, along the Frome riverside willows and alders at Rodden and Vallis, and in the chimney stacks and stone-slate roof voids of the older town-centre properties.
Nearest BBKA-affiliated associations to help with swarm collection and local advice.
BA115ES· approx. 5 km
Visit websiteBA13 4AQ· approx. 6 km
Visit websiteBA3 2DP· approx. 13 km
Visit websiteAssociation data sourced from the British Beekeepers Association directory via SwarmBase.
The apple orchards of Taunton Deane, Glastonbury and the Tone Valley give an early, intense flow in May; sycamore and hawthorn run behind. Lime scents the streets of Bath and Wells in June; bramble blankets every hedge. The Levels contribute a long late flow on willowherb, loosestrife and himalayan balsam along the rhynes. Mendip provides limestone grassland herbs — wild thyme, marjoram, knapweed — and the Quantocks give a small but real late heather supplement. Ivy closes the year on old orchards and stone churchyards.
More on beekeeping in SomersetReport it in under a minute and a trained local beekeeper will arrange safe collection.
