Castle Cary is a small limestone market town in South Somerset at the head of the River Cary, tucked into a shallow vale between the Polden ridges and the Mendip southern edge. The South East Somerset Division of the Somerset BKA covers the town and its rural hinterland of mixed livestock farms, ancient hedged fields and surviving orchard remnants. Spring forage builds on hawthorn in the old enclosure hedges and field maple on the limestone scarps, followed by white clover on the permanent pasture and bramble in the overgrown quarry edges and railway cutting scrub.
Local collectors respond regularly to swarms in the apple orchards and stone boundary walls of the villages of North Cadbury, Yarlington and Queen Camel, in the mature garden trees and chimney stacks of the town-centre conservation area, along the limestone-walled lane hedges on the Maperton and Ansford roads, and in the Cary valley riparian alders and willows below the town.
Nearest BBKA-affiliated associations to help with swarm collection and local advice.
BA9 8JG· approx. 5 km
Visit websiteBA4 5PF· approx. 10 km
Visit websiteTA11 7PY· approx. 16 km
Visit websiteAssociation data sourced from the British Beekeepers Association directory via SwarmBase.
The apple orchards of Taunton Deane, Glastonbury and the Tone Valley give an early, intense flow in May; sycamore and hawthorn run behind. Lime scents the streets of Bath and Wells in June; bramble blankets every hedge. The Levels contribute a long late flow on willowherb, loosestrife and himalayan balsam along the rhynes. Mendip provides limestone grassland herbs — wild thyme, marjoram, knapweed — and the Quantocks give a small but real late heather supplement. Ivy closes the year on old orchards and stone churchyards.
More on beekeeping in SomersetReport it in under a minute and a trained local beekeeper will arrange safe collection.
