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. There is no legal or registration requirement for establishing an apiary, however, it is important to consider good practice and ethical responsibilities.

In choosing a suitable site, you should consider:

• Availability of food for honey bees and other wild pollinators sensitive areas and endangered pollinator species, 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). 
• Special consideration should be given to causing nuisance to the public. Although well managed honey bees should not be aggressive unless the colony is disturbed, their behaviour can change through the year and after some general management procedures. You can be liable for any damage that your bees cause to the public. Under the Civic Government (Scotland) Act 1982, a court can remove any animal that is causing a nuisance.
• What kind of honey you want to produce, as the quality of the honey will depend on the forage. You can read about how it affects honey in this BBKA FAQ. 

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

Protected areas 

There is evidence that in certain circumstances, honey bees can put pressure on wild pollinators by transmitting disease and competing with them for food. We ask beekeepers to educate themselves on these issues and take ethical decisions. We discourage the concept of keeping honey bees to ‘save the pollinators’. If you are interested in helping the Scottish population of wild pollinators you can find information in NatureScot’s pollinator strategy.

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. 

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 the source of the bees, disease in the area where they originate, 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 isolated areas are currently thought not to have Varroa present, and movement of bees to these areas from elsewhere is not recommended in order to continue to keep the parasite away from these areas. 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 the potential risk of disease.

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

• Advice for Obtaining Honey Bees, BeeBase
• Guidance for the purchase and sale of nucleus colonies, National Bee Unit
• Obtaining your first bees, the Scottish Beekeepers Association

Importing bees

You can freely move 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