Olney is a historic market town on the Great Ouse in the northernmost part of Milton Keynes, famous for its annual Pancake Race and the hymn-writing partnership of John Newton and William Cowper. The town's Georgian market place, the meadows of the Ouse Valley along Weston Road and the cow pastures below the church of St Peter and St Paul carry a rich forage landscape; hawthorn is dense on the field boundaries north toward Emberton and Lavendon; and the Great Ouse floodplain meadows east of the town are among the finest unimproved water meadows in Buckinghamshire.
Collectors attend swarms on the Georgian and Victorian eaves of the Market Place and High Street, in the churchyard limes and sycamores of St Peter and St Paul, in the Great Ouse riverside hawthorn and willow scrub at Emberton Country Park, in the water meadow orchid and wildflower borders east of the town, and in the old orchard and kitchen gardens of the Weston Road and Yardley Road residential lanes.
Nearest BBKA-affiliated associations to help with swarm collection and local advice.
MK9 3EP· approx. 13 km
Visit websiteNN3 7AX· approx. 18 km
Visit websiteSG6 1NX· approx. 38 km
Visit websiteAssociation data sourced from the British Beekeepers Association directory via SwarmBase.
Oilseed rape is grown extensively on the agricultural plain around Castlethorpe, Hanslope and the fields north of Wolverton, opening the main flow in late April; the Great Ouse floodplain meadows carry white clover and riverside wildflowers through June and July. The linear parks of the new city — Ouzel Valley Park, Loughton Valley, Linford Wood and Campbell Park — carry lime trees, hawthorn and bramble through a long urban season. Lime trees were planted extensively on the boulevards and parkway margins of the new city in the 1970s and 1980s and now carry a strong June urban flow across the grid squares; hawthorn and blackthorn are thick on the original field hedgerows surviving within the linear parks. Woburn Sands and Aspley Heath, straddling the Bedfordshire border, carry heather and gorse on acidic sandy soils — an unusual local forage note for a lowland Midlands city. Bramble is prolific on the Redway scrub and former railway embankments; ivy on the stone walls of the old villages closes the year.
More on beekeeping in Milton KeynesReport it in under a minute and a trained local beekeeper will arrange safe collection.
