Bee swarm in Winchelsea? Help is a minute away.

Winchelsea is one of the most unusual towns in England — a thirteenth-century planned Cinque Port built to a grid of rectangular chequer blocks on its hilltop above the Brede and Rother levels, after the original town was overwhelmed by storms in 1287. Much of the planned medieval town was never built and remains as orchards, green lanes and walled gardens within the surviving grid, giving the present-day community an extraordinary density of mature fruit trees, ivy-clad old walls and sheltered cottage gardens that are highly productive for bees. The surrounding levels — Romney Marsh and the Brede valley grazing marshes — provide early hawthorn on the dyke banks and a rich late-season aster and ivy flow on the coastal levels.

The early flow starts on blackthorn and wild cherry, before hawthorn lights the hedges of the Weald. Late May to July carries the colonies on sweet chestnut around Heathfield, bramble across every common and hedge bank, and — most characteristically — heather on Ashdown Forest from late July into August, giving the dark, jelly-like Ash Down heather honey some members still cut-comb for show. Ivy closes the year on sheltered sandstone lanes and the tall old churchyards of Rye, Lewes and Battle.