Bee swarm in Peterchurch? Help is a minute away.

Peterchurch is the principal village of the Golden Valley — the flat-bottomed valley of the River Dore running between the Black Mountains and the Herefordshire plain — with its notable Norman and Romanesque church of St Peter containing some of the oldest Christian fabric in the county. The Wye Valley BKA covers the Golden Valley, and the surrounding landscape — the herb-rich meadows and old orchard ground of the Dore valley floor between Vowchurch and Bacton, the hawthorn and field-maple hedgerows of the old enclosures on the valley sides, the bilberry and heather of the Black Mountains rising to the west, the cider-apple orchards at Bacton and Turnastone, and the dense bramble and elder of the old railway formation on the Hay Railway trackbed — gives local bees an outstandingly varied mountain-and-valley season.

The season opens on tens of thousands of tonnes of orchard blossom — cider apple, culinary apple and traditional perry pear — across the Leominster and Hereford belt. Hawthorn on deep double-hedges follows; hop gardens provide a quieter supplementary forage. Lime and sweet chestnut dot the market towns. The Black Mountain foothills add bilberry, heather and gorse to hives on the county edge, and bramble is dense throughout. A long, strong ivy flow on red-sandstone churches and orchard windbreaks carries the year out.