Beekeeping

Establishing your apiary

Site selection

You can keep bees either on your own land or get a landowner’s permission to set up hives on their property. If you are renting, you should check whether your contract allows keeping livestock. No licence is required for establishing an apiary. 

In choosing a suitable site, you should consider:

• Availability of food for bees, maintenance access, and other land users. Good guides on choosing a site have been written by the National Bee Unit and British Beekeepers Association (BBKA). 
• What kind of honey you want to produce, as the quality of the honey will depend on the forage. You can read about it affects honey in this BBKA FAQ. 
• Whether you want to get an organic certification, as you might need to keep the bees away from chemical pesticides, herbicides, and pollution. 

Your local beekeeping association is a good source of advice on where to establish a hive.

Protected areas 

Honey bees can put pressure on wild pollinators by transmitting disease and competing with them for food. If your site is on a national nature reserve, you should consult NatureScot before establishing an apiary. Some restrictions also apply to what types of bees can be kept in certain areas, please see ‘Sourcing bees’. 

Read more about honey bees and conservation in the National Pollinator Strategy for Scotland.

Hive selection

After choosing your site, you need hives to house your bee colonies. A minimum of two hives is recommended to share resources between the colonies, and the Bee Farmers Association has some pointers on scaling up. 

There are different types of hive designs, which are suited to different types of beekeeping. Your local beekeeping association can advise you on selection, but the hives should have moveable frames for management and cleaning. 

If you want to be certified organic, your hive might need to be made from natural materials and use organic wax in the frames. 

Any second-hand hives should be carefully sterilised to avoid spreading disease. A guide on how to do this is available here on BeeBase.

Sourcing bees

Bees can be bought as a nucleus, a package, or a full colony. Most commonly, a hive will be started in May from a nucleus which is a small 3-6 frame population and will expand into full colony over the first season. 

When purchasing bees, you should pay attention to traceability, temperament, and colony health. You should be provided a record of any medicine treatments that have been applied to the colony, as well as a record of the movement of the colony for which a template can be found here. You should keep this record at least for two years. 

Sourcing your bees as locally as possible is recommended to avoid importing disease or pests.  

Area-specific restrictions 

• Colonsay and Oronsay are nature reserves for the black bee (Apis melliflera melliflera), and keeping other bees is prohibited. 
• Orkney and other localities are currently designated as Varroa-free, and importing bees to these areas from elsewhere is not recommended. Please see this leaflet.

Catching a swarm

• You can also start a hive by catching a bee swarm, but this is only recommended for experienced beekeepers and quarantine measures should be followed to control disease.

More information about purchasing bees and what to look out for:

• Advice for Obtaining Honey Bees, BeeBase
• Sale of Honey Bee Nuclei, Beebase
• Obtaining your first bees, the Scottish Beekeepers Association

Importing bees

You can freely import bees from England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Health certificates are required for bees from the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man. 

Importing bee colonies from any other countries to the UK is prohibited, except for New Zealand. You can, however, import queens and specific regulations apply to this.

More information about importing bees to Scotland:

https://www.gov.scot/publications/importing-bees-into-scotland-guidance/pages/importing-bees