Bee swarm in Alloway? Help is a minute away.

Alloway is a heritage village on the south side of Ayr, birthplace of Robert Burns in 1759 and the setting for his poem Tam o' Shanter. The Burns National Heritage Park encompasses the thatched Burns Cottage, the Burns Monument and the Brig o' Doon over the River Doon, and the surrounding parkland and wooded riverside form one of the finest bee landscapes in Ayrshire. The Doon valley below the monument carries mature sycamore, alder and willow on the riverside, and the formal gardens of the heritage park and the estate parkland of Belleisle to the north provide lime, horse chestnut and ornamental forage.

White clover is the dominant forage in South Ayrshire: the extensive dairy grasslands of the Ayr basin, the Girvan valley and the Carrick plain carry an abundant June and July flow that underpins the local honey crop. Hawthorn and sycamore bridge the post-spring gap on field margins, estate hedgerows and shelter belts. Gorse flowers in two flushes — April and again in late summer — on the coastal headlands, Carrick hillsides and the hill ground around Straiton. The Carrick hills above Maybole and Girvan carry heather moorland accessible to beekeepers who move colonies to the hill in late July. Bramble is plentiful in the coastal scrub and farm hedge-bottoms through August, and the River Ayr and River Doon corridors add willow and alder to the spring forage.