Bee swarm in Loftus? Help is a minute away.

Loftus is a former alum-works and mining town perched on the upper Cleveland Hills escarpment above the Liverton Beck, close to Boulby — the highest sea cliff on the east coast of England. The Cleveland Hills moorland of Grinkle Park, Roxby Beck and the North York Moors fringe rise immediately above the town; hawthorn is thick on the field boundaries of the old alum-works plateau; and the deeply cut beck valleys carry elder, bramble and willow scrub all the way to the sea at Staithes.

Oilseed rape on the flat arable plain between the Tees and the Cleveland escarpment produces a heavy April to May flow, particularly around Stokesley, Stillington and the fields east of Yarm. Hawthorn and blackthorn are thick in the suburban hedgerows of Stockton, Billingham and Guisborough. Lime trees line the Victorian residential streets of Middlesbrough, Hartlepool and Redcar and carry a reliable June flow. The defining feature of the landscape is the extent of ex-industrial grassland: former ICI works at Billingham and Wilton, steelworks sites at Redcar, and colliery reclamation ground throughout are dense with bramble, rosebay willowherb and white clover from June through August. Sea buckthorn and coastal meadow wildflowers on the North Tees marshes, Coatham Sands and Huntcliff provide a distinctive supplement near the shore. The Cleveland Hills rise sharply south of Guisborough, Skelton and Loftus and carry ling heather and bilberry from late July into September — within easy reach of apiaries on the urban fringe.