Stonehaven is a handsome coastal town south of Aberdeen — a historic fishing port in a sheltered bay below cliffs, with the ruined Dunnottar Castle on its headland to the south and the Kincardineshire farmland stretching inland across the Mearns. The Carron Water runs through the town to the harbour, giving a willow and elder bankside corridor, and the clifftop vegetation at Dunnottar and Crawton carries sea-pink, sea-campion and coastal herbs that give a distinctive character to the late-spring coastal flow. The town's older stone gardens and the Belvedere Park trees provide urban forage; bramble and rosebay willowherb are heavy on the disused railway cuttings south of the town.
Collectors attend swarms along the Carron Water willows and elder from the town centre to the harbour, on the clifftop sea-pink and scrub at Dunnottar Castle headland, in the walled gardens and granite chimney stacks of the older Bervie Road and High Street properties, in the Belvedere Park trees, and on the bramble and rosebay willowherb of the old railway line south toward Inverbervie.
Nearest BBKA-affiliated associations to help with swarm collection and local advice.
NE65 9QH· approx. 191 km
Visit websiteNE12 8EH· approx. 220 km
Visit websiteNE46 3NB· approx. 221 km
Visit websiteAssociation data sourced from the British Beekeepers Association directory via SwarmBase.
Oilseed rape on the vast arable belt around Inverurie, Turriff and Ellon is the defining early flow — Scotland's single biggest rape region. Hawthorn and sycamore carry the post-rape period; lime lights Aberdeen's granite streets in June. The heather of Royal Deeside, the Ladder Hills and the Cabrach gives one of the finest and most commercially worked heather honey flows in Britain. Bilberry and hill forage add; a short but real ivy flow on the granite villages finishes the year.
More on beekeeping in AberdeenshireReport it in under a minute and a trained local beekeeper will arrange safe collection.
