Medway · Swarm collection

Bee swarm in Hoo St Werburgh? Help is a minute away.

Hoo St Werburgh is the largest settlement on the Hoo Peninsula — the long tongue of land between the Thames and Medway estuaries — and serves as the commercial centre for this remote and ecologically remarkable area. The Hoo Peninsula farmland carries extensive oilseed rape on the flat clay plateau, giving a dominant April to May flow; sea lavender and coastal meadow wildflowers on the Cliffe Pools and Northward Hill RSPB reserves give a distinctive July-August estuarine supplement; and hawthorn is thick on the shelter-belt hedgerows planted across the open peninsula farmland.

Postcodes we cover
ME3
Where swarms appear in Hoo St Werburgh

Typical swarm locations

Collectors attend swarms on the Victorian and inter-war residential eaves and garden walls of the village centre around Main Road and Stoke Road, in the oilseed rape field margin hawthorn hedgerows on the Hoo plateau, in the Northward Hill woodland RSPB reserve scrub above the village, and in the sea lavender and coastal scrub at Cockham Wood and the Medway estuary shore east of Hoo.

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Beekeeping associations near Hoo St Werburgh

Nearest BBKA-affiliated associations to help with swarm collection and local advice.

Association data sourced from the British Beekeepers Association directory via SwarmBase.

Forage in Medway

The Medway valley fruit-growing tradition — the western part of the old Garden of England — gives apiaries south of Rochester access to extensive cherry, apple, pear and plum orchards in the Burham, Halling and Snodland areas, with a concentrated late-April to mid-May blossom flow. Oilseed rape is grown on the Hoo Peninsula plateau and the river-plain fields north of Cliffe, giving a strong April flow visible from the A228. Hawthorn is dense on the North Downs scarp hedgerows above Walderslade, Blue Bell Hill and Cuxton; the chalk downland between the Medway crossing and Bluewater carries dense blackthorn, hawthorn and field scabious. The Hoo Peninsula marshes at Cliffe Pools, Northward Hill and Cliffe Creek carry sea lavender, sea purslane and coastal meadow wildflowers through July and August — a distinctive estuarine forage note. Lime trees line the Victorian residential streets of Rochester, Chatham and Gillingham; bramble and elder are prolific on the old dockyard margins and the Medway riverside scrub. Ivy on the Rochester castle walls and the older city fabric closes the year in October.

More on beekeeping in Medway
Nearby towns

Swarm help in neighbouring towns

Seen a swarm in Hoo St Werburgh?

Report it in under a minute and a trained local beekeeper will arrange safe collection.