Street is a small town on the Somerset Levels adjoining Glastonbury, best known for the Clarks shoe-making legacy and surrounded by the rhyne-threaded wetlands of King's Sedgemoor and the Brue valley. The Somerton BKA covers this part of the Levels, and the surrounding landscape — the watermeadow and rhyne margins rich in purple loosestrife, hemp agrimony and meadowsweet, the pollarded willows of the Brue and Sheppey flood plain, the bramble-thick drove roads of the Levels, and the orchard remnants of the Street and Walton fringe — gives local bees a distinctive wetland season that continues well into late summer.
Collectors regularly attend swarms in the older garden remnants and mature trees of the High Street and Merriman Road areas, along the Brue riverside willows and rhyne margins at Northover and Walton Moor, in the orchard and allotment remnants of the town fringe, and in the chimney stacks and eaves of the older Levels-edge village and industrial town properties.
Nearest BBKA-affiliated associations to help with swarm collection and local advice.
TA11 7PY· approx. 7 km
Visit websiteBA4 5PF· approx. 16 km
Visit websiteBS27 3AA· approx. 18 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.
