A sting in this tale about bees for us

Monday, April 30, 2012

SUMMER is almost here and with it comes that inimitable telltale sound, the buzzing of bees.

Ireland is affected by the decimation of the world’s honey bee stocks, but there are still wild swarms to be seen here from late April to the end of June.

These normally emerge on warm days and settle for between a few hours and a few days before moving off.

A swarm could settle anywhere on a tree, or a wall, for instance. Sometimes, of course, bees settle in an inaccessible place.

If beekeepers knew of these swarms they would, if possible, gather them and use them.

The general public fear these swarms and people frequently exterminate them. Beekeepers say there are few sadder sights. Far better to save them. If you find such a swarm stuck on a tree in your back garden, don’t panic.

Anyone seeking advice in the Cork area can contact, 086-3232777. The idea is that beekeepers would phone around to one another to try to ensure someone could collect them.

Honey bees worldwide are under more stress now than they have been throughout history.

Their plight in many cases is man-made. Colony collapse now regularly occurs in areas where honey bees are used for pollination of crops such as almonds and pistachio nuts.

The effects of the demise of this tiny creature extend far beyond the shortage of a few jars of honey.

It could have a devastating impact on global food security; since it has been estimated that honey bees are responsible for pollinating many of our food crops.

Many experts believe that the decline of the honey bee is an alarm bell alerting our attention to problems in our wider environment and the unsustainable nature of our food and farming systems. Meanwhile, too few systems are in place to help protect bees and control disease outbreaks — all this with a growing global population.

No less a personage than Albert Einstein said: “If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man.”

Scientists, governments and environmental organisations are now taking action on a global scale to save the bee. Diseases, loss of habitat and the misuse of insecticides are some of the problems, with the varroa mite, a parasite, causing large-scale destruction, according to the Federation of Irish Beekeepers’ Associations.

Honey bees are essential pollinators for agriculture, horticulture and gardeners alike as they increase food crop yields by up to 25%. In California, the almond crop is totally dependent on honey bee pollination and without it almonds could not be produced.

The federation says things are not all that gloomy here.

We still have hedgerows where whitethorn, blackberry, bramble and willow grow wild. We still have a fair amount of wild habitat for bees, while controlled use of pesticides and a native strain, the dark Irish bee, leaves Ireland a haven for beekeeping.

Our bees have acclimatised over millennia and are very suited to Irish conditions, foraging at low temperatures and frugal with their winter store. They build up fast into strong colonies by early summer, thus leading to high honey yields at harvest time.

Leading beekeeping expert Dr Philip McCabe says people should simply do nothing if they find a nest of bees: they should seek the advice of a local beekeeper, or contact the College of Horticulture, An Grianán, Termonfechin, Co Louth. He says when a swarm of bees emerge from a colony they will usually hang on a tree, or bush, close-by. It’s all very orderly. It’s at this point that honey bees are at their calmest and are easy to handle.

The reason for this, he explains, is that they are full of food.

They fill up before emerging in a swarm and they have no home to defend. The beekeeper will then collect the swarm in a box or a straw skep and bring them to the site of their new home, a pre-prepared hive with frames of wax which is raised off the ground.

If the honey bee is in trouble so is its cousin, the bumble bee. At one time, Ireland’s hedges and meadows supported 18 bumble bee species, but surveys in recent years have found just three species.

The plump, furry-looking bee that can be seen flying from flower to flower in the garden is a bumble bee and is more visible than the honey bee. The widespread cutting down of hedgerows and intensification of farming are said to be among the reason for the loss of so many bumble bee species.

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