Kinross is a small market town on the western shore of Loch Leven, famous for its island castle where Mary Queen of Scots was imprisoned, and for the Vane Farm RSPB nature reserve on the southern loch shore. The lochside willows and alder at Kirkgate Park give a spring flow; the town's lime trees and sycamore provide June forage; and the productive arable farmland of the Kinross-shire lowlands carries oilseed rape from late April. The Cleish Hills and the Benarty ridge to the west and south carry bilberry and early heather; Burleigh Castle's estate woodland adds hawthorn and rowan. Loch Leven is famed for its sea-trout fishing and is one of the finest wetland sites in Scotland.
Collectors attend swarms in the Kirkgate Park loch-shore willows and garden borders, in the oilseed rape field-margin hedgerows on the Milnathort and Crook of Devon roads, in the stone garden walls and eaves of the older town centre, and on the bilberry and heather scrub of the Cleish Hills lower slopes above the town.
Nearest BBKA-affiliated associations to help with swarm collection and local advice.
CA6 4HN· approx. 143 km
Visit websiteNE65 9QH· approx. 150 km
Visit websiteNE46 3NB· approx. 160 km
Visit websiteAssociation data sourced from the British Beekeepers Association directory via SwarmBase.
The lower Strath Earn and Strath Tay are productive rape and raspberry country in May and early June — and Tayside raspberry honey is a distinctive and widely admired flow. Sycamore is heavy on estate parkland; lime lines Perth and Crieff streets. The defining late-summer flow is ling heather across the Perthshire glens — Glen Shee, Glen Lyon, Rannoch and Atholl — with long-established commercial apiaries migrating in. Bilberry, rowan and hill herbs supplement; ivy on stone villages finishes the year.
More on beekeeping in Perth and KinrossReport it in under a minute and a trained local beekeeper will arrange safe collection.
