Bee swarm in Histon? Help is a minute away.

Histon is a large village immediately north of Cambridge, historically famous as the home of the Chivers jam and marmalade factory — which at its peak was the largest fruit-processing plant in Europe and relied on orchard fruit from across south Cambridgeshire and the Fens — and now a growing satellite of Cambridge with a strong science and technology employment base. The Cambridgeshire BKA covers the village, and the surrounding landscape — the old Chivers orchard land and kitchen-garden fringe at Histon and Impington, the chalk arable farmland rising north toward Cottenham and Rampton, the River Cam riverside willows and watermeadow margins at Milton Country Park to the south-east, the hawthorn and elder hedgerows of the Rampton and Cottenham fringe lanes, and the oilseed rape and field-bean fields of the Cambridge clay vale — gives local bees a productive orchard-and-arable season close to the city.

Oilseed rape is the dominant early flow across the Fens; field beans add to the picture in June. Hawthorn, blackthorn and cherry plum fill the farm hedges that still mark every drove road. The lime avenues of Cambridge, Ely and Huntingdon provide a concentrated urban flow, and willow, hemp agrimony and purple loosestrife along the Great Ouse and Cam sustain hives well into July. Late summer brings sainfoin on chalk field margins and a modest heather crop on Thetford Heath gravels on the county edge.