Bee swarm in Crail? Help is a minute away.

Crail is the most easterly of the East Neuk of Fife fishing burghs, its ancient harbour tucked into a cleft in the sandstone cliffs above Fife Ness and the Balcomie Links golf course. The village is one of the best-preserved medieval planned burghs in Scotland, with a market place, tolbooth and collegiate church that date to the twelfth century, and its painted and pantiled harbour cottages have made Crail one of the most reproduced images in Scottish art. The harbour still lands shellfish, and the lobster and crab pots stacked on the quayside are a constant in the village character. The East Neuk coast here is at its most exposed, and the cliff-top grassland, coastal scrub and rock-pool margin provide a distinctive forage character compared with the more sheltered inlets to the west. Oilseed rape on the farmland between Crail and Anstruther gives the April–May early flow; hawthorn on the East Neuk coastal hedgerows and sycamore on the older lane trees carry spring into early summer. Sea-thrift, sea-campion and cliff-top gorse on the Fife Ness headland and coast path provide a late-spring and early-summer supplement; white clover on the Balcomie and Kingsbarns farmland is the main July source. Bramble on the cliff-top banks and the field boundary scrub extends the season; ivy on the older properties closes the year.

Oilseed rape is the defining early Fife flow across the central plain. Raspberry canes on the Howe of Fife add an unusual early-summer crop. Sycamore and lime carry May into June in St Andrews, Kirkcaldy, Dunfermline and Cupar. The Lomond Hills and parts of the north Fife moors give bell and ling heather. Coastal sea-aster and samphire along the East Neuk add seasoning; ivy on old fisher-town gables closes the year.