Bee swarm in Fettercairn? Help is a minute away.

Fettercairn is a small historic village in the Howe of the Mearns — the rich agricultural vale between the Grampian foothills and the Angus coastal plain — best known for Fettercairn Distillery, which has been producing single malt whisky since 1824 and is one of Scotland's oldest licensed distilleries. The village's ornate gothic triumphal arch, erected to commemorate a royal visit by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in 1861, stands at the head of the main street. The Howe of the Mearns farmland surrounding the village is some of the most productive in the north-east, carrying oilseed rape and spring barley in rotation through extensive flat fields; white clover on the improved pastures and field-margin strips runs through summer. The Fasque and Edzell estates to the north bring mature broadleaf woodland and walled-garden forage; the foothills of the Cairngorms south-east of Auchenblae offer heather moor access to apiaries willing to move colonies in late July.

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.