Bee swarm in Back? Help is a minute away.

Back — Bac in Gaelic — is a township on the east coast of Lewis, set along the shore of a sheltered sea inlet a few miles north of Stornoway on the road to the Eye Peninsula. The village has a primary school, church, and the characteristic croft layout of strips running back from the machair-edged shore to the open moorland behind. The landscape here is gentler than the rugged west Lewis coast — lower peat moorland, improved croft grassland, and the sheltered inner coast of the Minch providing a less exposed climate than the Atlantic-facing townships. Back is one of the more accessible rural communities from Stornoway, and its croft land and garden enclosures provide productive forage alongside the heather on the moorland above.

Machair — the distinctive shell-sand grassland of the Atlantic coast — is the most celebrated forage environment of the Western Isles, supporting wild thyme, clover, bird's-foot trefoil, ragged robin and corn marigold in summer on North and South Uist and western Benbecula. White clover and red clover on improved croft grassland provide the main June-to-August flow across all the islands. Heather on the Lewis and Harris moorland — one of the largest continuous heather blankets in Britain — is the defining late-season flow, running from late July through September; bell heather predominates on the drier ground. Sycamore in the Lews Castle grounds and town parks around Stornoway provides a productive May flow in the only sizeable urban forage zone. Gorse is abundant on the roadsides and rough ground of Lewis and Harris from March into June. Bramble flowers on disturbed ground and roadsides throughout the islands from July into September. Ivy on older stone buildings and walls closes the season in October for colonies in more sheltered positions.