‘No scare’ over Irish hives as bee movie highlights colony collapse

BEEKEEPERS, don’t panic! The Irish bee colony is under no threat, so don’t pay too much heed to a new movie tracing the mysterious disappearance of bees in the US.

The movie, entitled Vanishing of the Bees, is on limited release in Britain from next week. It follows the fate of a group of US beekeepers hit by Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD).

But the bee movie will have a very current resonance for Irish beekeepers.

A shudder went through the beekeeping sector earlier this year when a study found that one in three of Northern Ireland’s honey bee colonies had vanished in the last year.

Last year, some beekeepers in the North reported bee losses as high as 50% through CCD. An estimated one third of fruit and vegetables eaten by humans depend on pollination by honeybees. Northern authorities estimated that a loss of colonies could put Armagh’s €55 million-a -year apple industry at risk. Experts think pesticides may have caused both the Northern and US bee losses.

However, Michael Gleeson, national secretary for the Federation of Irish Beekeepers Associations, said Irish bee colonies were not in any danger. The federation has 1,700 members, accounting for up to 22,000 beehives.

“We haven’t experienced that [CCD] in this country,” said Mr Gleeson.

“There is no real commercial beekeeping in Ireland, though it is a very old craft and it is becoming very popular here.

“The biggest problem we have had to face here this year was the bad weather.

“The bees worked better here in the last few weeks than they did for the entire of July and August,” he added.

“A lot of scientists think the most likely explanation for the US disappearances was insecticides and pesticides.

“I was at the World Beekeeping Conference in the south of France a few weeks ago, where the subject was discussed.

“You will always have losses in any form of animal husbandry. There is no scare here.”

The new documentary film also focuses on rural beehives, though uniquely in the US, where billions of honey bees disappeared in 2004.

The film concludes that the chief suspect is pesticides.

Countless bees vanished, leaving empty hives but few bodies, and the phenomenon has variously been linked to mites, disease, genetically modified crops, mobile phones and, in the words of one beekeeper, “piss-poor beekeeping”.

Vanishing of the Bees opens in selected British theatres on October 9 but as yet no date has been set for an Irish release.