Bee swarm in Ditton? Help is a minute away.

Ditton is an industrial and residential district of Widnes, sitting between the town centre and the Mersey Estuary, and best known as the location of the Ditton Biomass power station and the former Ditton soap and chemical works. The district has a traditional Widnes working-class character in its older streets but also a significant amount of open industrial land and the Sankey Valley park corridor along the Sankey Canal — a productive brownfield-to-green-space transition where willowherb, bramble and riverside wildflowers provide summer forage for local bees.

The Mersey Estuary saltmarsh at Hale and the Weaver Navigation corridor carry sea aster, sea lavender and coastal meadow wildflowers through July and August — an uncommon estuarine forage source for the area. Oilseed rape is grown on the clay farmland around Halebank, Farnworth and the eastern edges of both towns, providing an April flow. Hawthorn hedgerows are dense along the Mersey Valley paths between the two towns and in the Daresbury and Moore corridor to the east. White clover fills the rough grassland of the Halton Lea area and the open ground around the new-town estates. Bramble is prolific on the railway embankments, the brownfield margins of the former chemical works, and the Spike Island reserve. Lime trees line the older streets of Widnes and the Victorian quarter of Runcorn, while ivy on the sandstone bluff faces and older brickwork closes the season in October.