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Kirkwall is the capital and largest town of Orkney, set at the head of a sheltered bay on the Orkney Mainland and dominated by the twelfth-century Cathedral of St Magnus — one of the best-preserved Norse cathedrals in Britain. The town is the administrative, commercial and ferry hub of the archipelago, with the Ba' Game football tradition each Christmas and New Year marking it as a place of deep local character. The surrounding farmland carries a patchwork of improved pasture, arable fields and market gardens; the sheltered hinterland north and west of the town, with its hawthorn-fringed enclosures and sycamore-planted policies, gives local bees a long and varied forage season from April through September.

White clover on the rich improved pastures of the Orkney Mainland is the defining honey flow, running through June and July and producing a light, mild honey characteristic of the islands. Oilseed rape is grown on the better arable ground around Kirkwall, Finstown and the Stenness basin and provides an important April-to-May spring flow. Phacelia, now widely sown as a bee-friendly cover crop by Orkney farmers, extends the arable season into summer. Heather on the moorland ridges of Hoy and the western Mainland fringes from mid-July through September gives late-season colonies a valuable top-up flow. Hawthorn in sheltered croft enclosures and gardens is an important May source, earlier than it opens on the Scottish mainland. Sycamore in the sheltered town gardens and school grounds of Kirkwall and Stromness drives the May urban flow. Gorse on rough grazing ground and cliff edges flowers from March and provides early pollen for spring build-up. Bramble on disturbed and fallow ground through July and August, and ivy on older stone buildings and dykes in October, close the season.