Cutting back around the apiary: what you may cut, and when

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Two rules, and only one of them is a season

Two separate things govern cutting near an apiary. Most people know one of them.

The first is about nests. Under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 it is an offence to intentionally take, damage or destroy the nest of any wild bird while that nest is in use or being built. 1 There are no dates in that. It attaches to the nest, wherever the nest is: hedge, tree, bramble, shed.

The second is a calendar. The Management of Hedgerows (England) Regulations 2024 prohibit the cutting and trimming of a hedgerow they cover from 1 March to 31 August inclusive. 2 On 1 September that one lifts.

The nest rule does not lift, because it never was a calendar. The RSPB puts the main nesting season at March to September, and recommends cutting hedges only between 1 September and 28 February. 7 September is the month where the two overlap. Look before you cut, every time.

Which hedges the Regulations actually catch

Most hobby apiary hedges are not caught at all. That is worth getting right, because the Regulations set their own scope and it is narrower than the headlines suggest.

They apply to a hedgerow growing on land used for agriculture where that hedgerow runs a continuous 20 metres or more, or is shorter but meets another hedgerow at each end. 2 When you measure, a gap of 20 metres or less counts as part of the hedgerow. 2

There is an express exclusion as well. A hedgerow inside the curtilage of a dwelling house, or marking a boundary of that curtilage, is outside the Regulations entirely. 2 GOV.UK says the same in plainer words, and applies it to both sides of the hedge. 3

So a short free-standing hedge round a paddock apiary, joining nothing at either end, is not inside the cutting ban. A garden hedge is not inside it either. The nest offence still covers both. 1 One rule going away does not take the other with it.

On enforcement, the instrument itself names the Secretary of State as the regulator. 2 In practice it is the Rural Payments Agency, which GOV.UK names as the regulator for these rules and says may visit land to check. 3

What is allowed inside the closed period

The ban is not flat, and the exceptions sit inside the Regulations rather than outside them. That is the part most summaries leave out.

Cutting is permitted where the hedgerow overhangs a highway, road or footpath and obstructs the passage of people or vehicles, endangers users, obstructs the view of traffic, or blocks the light from a public lamp. 2 It is permitted where the hedge is dead, diseased, damaged or insecurely rooted and is likely to cause danger by falling. 2

So roadside and sight-line work is an exception written into the Regulations. A separate highways requirement may sit on top of it. Ask the council rather than guess.

The rest of the list is narrower than people hope. Hedge-laying and coppicing are allowed between 1 March and 30 April, a newly laid hedge may be hand-trimmed within six months, and cutting is allowed for human or animal health and safety, for plant disease, pests or weeds, and for statutory work. 2 An August trim ahead of sowing oilseed rape or temporary grass needs written notice to the regulator first. 2

The two metre strip, and what it does not excuse

Where the Regulations apply there is a second duty, and it has nothing to do with dates. The owner must take all reasonable steps to establish and then maintain green cover within two metres of the centre of the hedgerow, and must not cultivate that strip or apply fertilisers or pesticides to it. 2

That matters for a hive standing on a field margin. Mowing or strimming the strip is fine. Spraying the growth off under the hedge is not.

The buffer duty carries its own exceptions: a hedgerow less than five years old, a parcel of two hectares or less measured within permanent boundary features, casting up a traditional hedge bank between 1 September and the end of February, the side facing a dwelling house where the hedge marks its curtilage, and allotment land. 2

Read that list carefully. Those are exceptions to the strip, and to nothing else. A two hectare paddock is free of the buffer duty and still inside the cutting ban if its hedge meets the length test. Conflating the two is the easy mistake here.

Trees, and taking a hedge out, are separate permissions

Before a tree is touched, check two things with the local planning authority.

• A Tree Preservation Order. Work on a protected tree needs the authority’s written consent first, applied for on a standard form. 4
• A conservation area. A tree there with no Order of its own still needs a section 211 notice, given six weeks before the work starts. 4

Felling has a third gate. In England a felling licence is needed to fell more than five cubic metres in any calendar quarter, and no more than two of those five may be sold. 5 Licences are free and come from the Forestry Commission. 5

Removing a hedgerow is a different job from cutting one. Under the Hedgerows Regulations 1997 a hedgerow of 20 metres or more on agricultural, forestry, common or protected land cannot be taken out without a hedgerow removal notice to the local planning authority, followed by written permission or 42 days of silence. 6 Those Regulations carry their own “important hedgerow” test, which is not the 2024 one. Do not carry the phrase between them.

A tree on somebody else’s land is their tree. On a rented site the landowner decides and the consent question is theirs. Chainsaw work at height belongs to someone insured and competent, which is our view rather than a legal requirement.

England, and the rest of the UK

The 2024 Regulations apply in England only. 2 The closed dates elsewhere are not different. The instruments behind them are.

Northern Ireland runs the same period. DAERA says hedge, tree and scrub cutting is not permitted between 1 March and 31 August, allows cutting where the health and safety of road users requires it, and notes that cutting can be an offence under the Wildlife (Northern Ireland) Order 1985. 8 The 1981 Act does not extend there. 1

Scotland and Wales have their own arrangements. Check the position with your own administration rather than assume the English exceptions travel.

One difference is worth knowing. In Scotland the nest offence covers acts done recklessly as well as intentionally. 1 “I did not look” carries less weight there.

What actually needs cutting around a hive

This section is house practice rather than guidance from anybody. It is the order we work in.

• Stray growth at flying height. Take back what has grown across the front since spring, and anything resting on the entrance itself.
• Not the screen. A hedge, fence or wall set close in front of the entrances is doing a job. It lifts the flight line above head height before it crosses the boundary, so it stays, and it stays high. The apiary layout guide explains why.
• Overhanging limbs. Anything that could come down on a hive in a gale. This is the one that costs money if you skip it.
• Shade. A shaded hive stays damp, and damp does more winter harm than cold. Opening up the southern side pays back by March.
• Grass at the entrance. Cut it short and keep it short. Long grass holds wet, hides the entrance and gives a mouse a covered run in October.
• Room to work. A metre behind and beside each hive, so a box has somewhere to go.

Leave more than you cut. A permeable windbreak is worth having, and a bare exposed site is its own problem. The aim is a clear front and a sheltered back, not a clearing.

Doing it without a sting in it

Also ours, and learned the hard way rather than read anywhere.

• Work on a warm bright day when the flyers are out, or in the cool of the evening. We prefer a warm afternoon, veiled.
• Strimmer vibration through a stand brings the guards out. Do not rest the machine on a hive or a stand.
• Keep the noise short. Late September is peak robbing pressure, and a long session beside a colony invites it. The wasps and robbing guide covers the rest.
• Take the cuttings away. A brash pile behind the hives is a mouse hotel and a damp trap.
• Check the front before you leave. Nothing across an entrance, nothing leaning on a roof.

When the simple rule breaks down

• A late brood. Wood pigeons will still be sitting in September. The nest offence applies whatever the date. 1
• Flowering ivy. Ivy is the last real forage of the year over much of the UK, so cutting a boundary hedge hard in September can take the autumn flow with it. Leave the flowering growth until winter. That is our view, not a rule.
• Roadside hedges. Obstruction, sight lines and a dangerous hedge are exceptions inside the Regulations, so that cutting is allowed in the closed period. 2 The nest offence is not suspended with it. 1
• A hedge you assume is exempt. Check the length, check what it meets at each end, and check the curtilage before you rely on it. 23
• A rented or shared site. Permission to keep bees there is not permission to cut. Ask the owner first.
• Bats and other protected species in trees. That is a survey job, not a September afternoon.

The short version

• The England cutting ban runs 1 March to 31 August inclusive, so the window opens on 1 September. 2
• It only bites on a hedgerow on agricultural land of 20 metres or more, or a shorter one meeting another hedgerow at each end, and never on one marking the curtilage of a house. 23
• The nest offence has no season at all, and in Scotland recklessness is enough. 1
• The RSPB puts the main nesting season at March to September and cuts hedges only from 1 September to the end of February. 7
• Highway obstruction, sight lines and a dangerous hedge are exceptions written into the Regulations. 2
• The two metre strip means green cover, no cultivation, no fertiliser and no pesticide. Its exceptions do not touch the cutting ban. 2
• The Rural Payments Agency is the regulator for the hedgerow rules. 3
• Check for a Tree Preservation Order or a conservation area before touching a tree, and for a felling licence above five cubic metres a quarter. 45
• Taking a hedgerow out needs a removal notice to the council, which is a different regime again. 6
• Northern Ireland runs the same dates under its own rules. Scotland and Wales have their own. 8
• House practice: clear the flight line, keep the screen, drop the loose limbs, cut the grass at the entrance, take the cuttings away.