Bee swarm in Hartlebury? Help is a minute away.

Hartlebury is a village on the A449 between Kidderminster and Worcester, notable for Hartlebury Castle — the medieval seat of the Bishops of Worcester, now home to Worcestershire County Museum — and for Hartlebury Common, a rare lowland heath managed as a nature reserve with heather, gorse and silver birch. The North East Worcestershire BKA covers the village, and the surrounding landscape — the Hartlebury Common heather and gorse, the Stour valley meadows and willow carr to the north, the old orchard and hop-garden land of the Ombersley and Ombersley Court estate fringe, and the river-meadow willows of the Severn at Stourport just to the west — gives local bees an unusually varied sequence of flowering from early gorse in February through to autumn ivy.

The Vale of Evesham opens the year with apple, pear, plum and the last surviving commercial asparagus flowers. Oilseed rape fills the middle fields; hawthorn and sycamore line the lanes. Lime dominates the June streetscape of Worcester, Malvern and Kidderminster. The Malvern Hills bring limestone grassland herbs and a small late-summer heather supplement on the upper slopes; bramble is universal. The tail of the year still carries some traditional hop-garden forage around Bromsgrove, and ivy on the old black-and-white villages closes the season.