Bee swarm in Redcar? Help is a minute away.

Redcar is a former steel and fishing town on the North Sea coast whose long sandy beach, Victorian seafront and the Coatham Sands dune system define its character. The town faces directly onto open sea, and the sea-buckthorn and coastal meadow wildflowers on Redcar and Coatham Sands provide a distinctive late-summer supplement for bee colonies; inland, reclaimed land from the former Redcar steelworks carries expansive bramble and willowherb habitat, and oilseed rape grows on the farmland of Kirkleatham and Yearby to the south.

Oilseed rape on the flat arable plain between the Tees and the Cleveland escarpment produces a heavy April to May flow, particularly around Stokesley, Stillington and the fields east of Yarm. Hawthorn and blackthorn are thick in the suburban hedgerows of Stockton, Billingham and Guisborough. Lime trees line the Victorian residential streets of Middlesbrough, Hartlepool and Redcar and carry a reliable June flow. The defining feature of the landscape is the extent of ex-industrial grassland: former ICI works at Billingham and Wilton, steelworks sites at Redcar, and colliery reclamation ground throughout are dense with bramble, rosebay willowherb and white clover from June through August. Sea buckthorn and coastal meadow wildflowers on the North Tees marshes, Coatham Sands and Huntcliff provide a distinctive supplement near the shore. The Cleveland Hills rise sharply south of Guisborough, Skelton and Loftus and carry ling heather and bilberry from late July into September — within easy reach of apiaries on the urban fringe.