Staple Hill is a Victorian suburban town on the eastern edge of Bristol at the head of the Frome Valley, its High Street a busy commercial strip of Victorian and Edwardian properties backed by established residential gardens and the Mangotsfield rail-trail greenway. The Frome Valley walkway scrub at Bromley Heath and the Folly Brook carry hawthorn and bramble; lime trees line the older residential streets; and the allotment gardens of the Whiteshill and Staple Hill Road area give bees a productive urban-fringe season.
Collectors attend swarms on the Victorian terrace eaves and garden walls of High Street and Soundwell Road, in the Frome Valley walkway hawthorn and elder scrub at Bromley Heath and Mangotsfield, in the allotment and orchard garden plots on the residential streets above the Frome Valley, and in the Folly Brook scrub and bramble banks between Staple Hill and Emersons Green.
Nearest BBKA-affiliated associations to help with swarm collection and local advice.
BS1 4QS· approx. 9 km
Visit websitebs313ep· approx. 9 km
Visit websiteBS32 4PG· approx. 13 km
Visit websiteAssociation data sourced from the British Beekeepers Association directory via SwarmBase.
Oilseed rape on the Severn Vale farmland between Thornbury, Oldbury-on-Severn and the M5 corridor gives a strong April to May flow; the flat fields around Olveston and Aust carry it particularly heavily. Hawthorn and blackthorn are dense on the Cotswold edge hedgerows above Wickwar, Rangeworthy and Iron Acton, and the Frome valley farmland east of Yate carries a reliable hawthorn flow in late April. Lime trees line the older streets of Kingswood, Staple Hill and Mangotsfield and carry a June town-centre flow. The Filton Airfield and BAE Systems perimeter scrub carries extensive bramble and rosebay willowherb, and the Frampton Cotterell and Coalpit Heath old colliery reclamation ground is dense with bramble through July and August. Sycamore is abundant along field margins and roadside hedgerows throughout the Cotswold edge; white clover on the improved grasslands of the Severn Vale closes the main flow from June to August. Ivy on the Cotswold limestone walls and the older suburban garden walls closes the year in October.
More on beekeeping in South GloucestershireReport it in under a minute and a trained local beekeeper will arrange safe collection.
