Bee swarm in Waterbeach? Help is a minute away.

Waterbeach is a growing village north of Cambridge on the Ely railway line, set at the point where the chalk spring-line meets the southern fen, with Waterbeach Barracks — a former military site now being developed as a new settlement — forming a large green buffer on its western edge. The Cambridgeshire BKA covers the area, and the surrounding landscape — the Great Ouse and River Cam riverside willows and alder at Chittering and Denny Abbey, the Wicken Fen National Nature Reserve sedge-fen and lode system to the north-east, the chalk arable farmland rising gently toward Landbeach and Milton on the Cambridge fringe, the oilseed rape and field-bean fields of the fen edge, and the bramble and willowherb of the old military site margins — gives local bees a varied fen-edge and riverside season.

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.