Busy as a bee: Summer swarming season in full swing

Political swarm clouds are gathering over honeybee colonies in Ireland just now. The swarming season has arrived and palace revolutions will erupt over the next two months as hives become crowded

Sat, 06 Jun, 2026 - 09:30

Richard Collins

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown — Henry IV

Marking wild creatures with rings or tags, so as to track them, is a mainstay of wildlife research. But, according to historian Chris Doyle of the University of Galway, our bee-keeping ancestors used a similar technique two millennia ago.

Bee jurisprudence has a long history in Ireland. Beekeeping conventions, Doyle tells us, were enshrined in Brehon Law. The ‘Bechbretha’ (bee judgements) were first written down in the 7th or 8th Centuries, but may be older. The rights and responsibilities of beekeepers were set out with an emphasis on restorative, rather than criminal, justice.

If ‘neighbouring bees had rampaged through your flowers, stealing nectar, before buzzing away with their ill-gotten gains’, he says, you could have redress. But you had to determine whose bees they were. By ‘dusting’ flour on the intruders, you could track ‘the culprits’ back to their hive and seek compensation from their owner.

Bees under Brehon law were classified as domestic, rather than wild, animals.

Bees were classified as domestic, rather than wild, animals. Cattle horses and pigs provided a range of services. So did bees; they gave us honey for sweetening, mead for partying, wax for candles and seals for documents. Honey was thought to have medicinal properties.

In 637AD the Ulster king Congal Cáech lost an eye to a bee sting. A king had to be physically perfect, so he lost his throne as a result.

Political animals

Politics is a cruel sport. Stalin had Trotsky killed. Elizabeth 1st signed the death warrant of her cousin Mary Queen of Scots. Richard 3rd murdered his nephews and was slaughtered in turn by Henry Tudor on ‘Bosworth field’. How bloody-minded we humans are!

But we are we not the only violent political animals, far from it. Political swarm clouds are gathering over honeybee colonies in Ireland just now. The swarming season has arrived and palace revolutions will erupt over the next two months.

When hives become crowded, the reigning queen, along with half of her worker daughters, departs the ancestral home in a swirling cloud. The royal entourage rests up here and there, while scouts search out possible new locations in which to re-establish her court. Irish honeybees have silver spoons in their mouths. Our beekeepers offer the royal parties gleaming new state-of-the-art residences.

Meanwhile back at the old ranch, new pretenders to the throne emerge; would-be virgin queens vie to step into the departed monarch’s shoes. The successful candidate will embark on a killing spree, murdering all of the rival aspirants. ‘Nature red in tooth and claw’!

Swarming bees are the ultimate trespassers, raising all manner of legal problems. Does the owner of the hive from which it originated still ‘own’ a swarm when it settles on another’s land? Bees tend to be docile when swarming, but which landowner is responsible if somebody is stung?

The old bee judgements held that when a swarm sets up shop on a neighbour’s pad, the original owner of the bees was entitled to a share of the honey. Timeframes within which this rule applied were specified.

Being stung by a bee constituted an assault. but the victim had to swear that the attack has been unprovoked.