Sharnbrook is a limestone village in north Bedfordshire on the Great Ouse, with a secondary school that draws pupils from across the north of the county and an older village centre of ironstone and limestone buildings around the church of St Peter. The surrounding landscape — the Great Ouse riverside willows and watermeadow margins between Sharnbrook and Odell, the ridge-and-furrow limestone pasture of the Sharnbrook and Souldrop plateau, the oilseed rape and cereal fields of the Ouse vale farmland toward Bletsoe and Felmersham, and the hawthorn and field-maple hedgerows of the old enclosure landscape north of the river — gives local bees a varied river-valley and old-limestone-country season. The Bedfordshire BKA covers the village.
Collectors here attend swarms in the riverside willows and scrub along the Great Ouse footpath toward Felmersham and Radwell, in the churchyard limes and mature garden trees of St Peter's and the older village streets, in the bramble and elder of the ridge-and-furrow pasture margins east of the village, and in the chimney stacks and outbuildings of the older ironstone farmhouses and cottages throughout the Sharnbrook parish.
Nearest BBKA-affiliated associations to help with swarm collection and local advice.
NN3 7AX· approx. 19 km
Visit websiteMK9 3EP· approx. 26 km
Visit websiteSG6 1NX· approx. 39 km
Visit websiteAssociation data sourced from the British Beekeepers Association directory via SwarmBase.
Oilseed rape is the dominant early flow across central Beds, supplemented by field beans. The Greensand Ridge brings sweet chestnut and bramble in the woods of Woburn, Aspley and Sandy. Lime lines the Georgian streets of Bedford and the older parts of Ampthill and Leighton Buzzard. Chalk grassland herbs — wild thyme, marjoram, knapweed — are still found on the downland fringe near Dunstable. Rosebay willowherb in the disused brickworks is a minor but characteristic flow; ivy on limestone village walls finishes the year.
More on beekeeping in BedfordshireReport it in under a minute and a trained local beekeeper will arrange safe collection.
