Bee swarm in Ealing? Help is a minute away.

Ealing — long called the "Queen of the Suburbs" — is one of the greener outer London boroughs, built around a series of open commons and Victorian parks that give honey bees a generous forage run from early spring through October. Ealing Common, with its avenue of veteran oaks and its lime margins, feeds hives from a short walk of the high street; Walpole Park and the surrounding conservation area provide sycamore, lime, horse chestnut and ornamental cherries; and the canal corridor of the Grand Union at Hanwell carries bramble, comfrey and elder through high summer. The Ealing & District Beekeepers Association is one of the most active in west London, with a strong training programme and a responsive swarm roster covering the borough.

The capital opens early on crocus in the parks, then builds on blackthorn, cherry plum and Japanese cherry through March and April. The defining London flow is lime — avenues of common, small-leaved and silver lime line central streets from Regents Park to Bermondsey, producing the distinctively pale, mineral London honey of June. Bramble and rosebay willowherb fill brownfield sites and railway embankments, and a huge secondary ivy flow carries hives deep into autumn on Victorian cemeteries and garden boundaries.