Tenterden is a handsome Wealden market town — sometimes called the Jewel of the Weald — set on a sandstone ridge above the Rother Levels in the High Weald of Kent. Its wide main street, ancient weatherboarded houses and the surrounding orchards, hop gardens and coppiced oak woodland give local honey bees one of the most characteristically Kentish environments: apple and pear blossom in spring, sweet chestnut and coppice-edge bramble through summer, and ivy on the sandstone churchyard walls in autumn.
Local collectors are regularly called to swarms in the old orchard trees and hop-yard hedgerows on the lanes south and east of town, in the chimney stacks and roof voids of the medieval High Street properties, in the churchyard lime and yew at St Mildred's, and in the garden apple trees and tall escallonia hedges of the residential roads towards Appledore.
Nearest BBKA-affiliated associations to help with swarm collection and local advice.
TN26 2PE· approx. 13 km
Visit websiteTN17 1JB· approx. 17 km
Visit websiteME17 1NQ· approx. 18 km
Visit websiteAssociation data sourced from the British Beekeepers Association directory via SwarmBase.
Few places open as explosively as Kent. Cherry, apple, pear and plum in the orchards of Faversham, Tenterden and the Medway bring an intense early flow, followed closely by oilseed rape on the North Downs dip slopes. Lime and sweet chestnut carry hives through June, particularly in the coppiced woods of the Weald. Late summer is often dominated by fireweed on the chalk pits and disturbed ground, with a strong and valuable ivy flow across the coastal plain from Deal to Whitstable. Hops, though decorative for bees, add to the mosaic.
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