Bee swarm in Crowle? Help is a minute away.

Crowle is a small market town in the northern part of the Isle of Axholme, set on a slight eminence above the surrounding drained fen. The town's traditional centre around the market place and St Oswald's Church gives way on all sides to the rectilinear fields, drainage dykes and peat soils created by Vermuyden's seventeenth-century works. Crowle Moor — one of the few surviving raised peat bogs in the Axholme area — lies immediately to the south and east of the town, carrying heather, cross-leaved heath and bog rosemary on the surviving peat surface: a rare late-summer forage source for bees kept on the Axholme fen.

Oilseed rape covers vast areas of the clay farmland between Scunthorpe, Brigg and Kirton in Lindsey, delivering a strong April flow that fills supers quickly on well-established colonies. White clover follows through June and July on the river meadows along the Trent and Ancholme corridors. The Isle of Axholme carries alder and willow carr along its drainage dykes — both valuable for early pollen — and bramble is prolific on the earthen embankments of Vermuyden's drainage channels through July. Hawthorn is dense in the hedgerow network on the Wolds escarpment above Kirton in Lindsey and Brigg. Willowherb colonises railway cuttings and roadside verges across Scunthorpe through August. Sycamore and lime shade the older streets of Brigg and Barton-upon-Humber, while ivy on the Humber-facing walls and churchyards in Barton closes the season in October.