Bee swarm in Coatbridge? Help is a minute away.

Coatbridge is a post-industrial town on the plateau east of Glasgow, historically the centre of Scotland's iron foundry trade and now a mixed residential and commercial area whose legacy of reclaimed industrial ground provides unusual forage. Drumpellier Country Park at the northern edge of the town, centred on two lochs in a broadleaf woodland setting, gives bees the most productive forage landscape in the Coatbridge area: lime, sycamore and hawthorn in the parkland, and reed and wetland margins on the lochs. The South Calder Water and North Calder Water corridors carry elder, willowherb and himalayan balsam; white clover on the managed grasslands and verges peaks in June and July.

Sycamore is the dominant May flow tree across North Lanarkshire, most productive in the residential streets and country parks of the Clyde plain. White clover on the improved amenity grasslands and the agricultural fields of the Kelvin and Calder valleys peaks in June and July. The Forth and Clyde Canal corridor through Kilsyth carries himalayan balsam from late July; bramble is prolific on the former steelworks and colliery reclamation sites throughout Motherwell, Coatbridge and Bellshill. Drumpellier Country Park near Coatbridge and Strathclyde Country Park near Motherwell provide sheltered lime and hawthorn parkland forage. The Campsie Fells above Kilsyth carry heather and bilberry from late July into September — accessible heather ground for North Lanarkshire beekeepers willing to make a short journey up the hill. Gorse is dense on the moorland fringe above Kilsyth and Cumbernauld; ivy closes the calendar in October in the older town centres.