Melksham is a market town on the Avon in west Wiltshire, between Chippenham and Trowbridge, with the Avon watermeadows threading through the town and the limestone pasture and old dairy farms of the Pewsey vale fringe to the east. The West Wiltshire BKA covers the town, and the surrounding landscape — riverside alders and willows, old hedged pasture, the scrub and grassland of Spye Park and the walled garden and orchard remnants of the older town fringe — gives local bees a dependable mixed-agricultural season.
Collectors regularly attend swarms in the orchard and garden remnants of the Canon Square and Bank Street conservation areas, along the Avon riverside willows and watermeadow margins at Melksham Forest and Berryfield, in the hedgerow oaks and scrub of the Spye Park lanes towards Derry Hill, and in the chimney stacks and eaves of the older Victorian and Edwardian town-centre properties.
Nearest BBKA-affiliated associations to help with swarm collection and local advice.
SN12 6ES· approx. 0 km
Visit websiteSN10 2LA· approx. 13 km
Visit websiteBA13 4AQ· approx. 17 km
Visit websiteAssociation data sourced from the British Beekeepers Association directory via SwarmBase.
Early blackthorn and hawthorn along the cowslip-strewn down edges open the year, followed by oilseed rape on the clay vale around Chippenham. Sainfoin is still grown here, and chalk grassland herbs — thyme, marjoram, knapweed, yellow rattle — give a herb-scented character to summer Wiltshire honey that connoisseurs notice. Lime lines Salisbury, Marlborough and Devizes streets; sweet chestnut at Savernake contributes to June. A small but reliable late ivy flow on flint churchyards closes a long chalkland season.
More on beekeeping in WiltshireReport it in under a minute and a trained local beekeeper will arrange safe collection.
