Grace on a quest to save Irish Honeybees
When the Native Irish Honeybee Society sought assistance from scientist and NUIG Professor Grace McCormack in its work to conserve the species and increase its population, this marked the start of a research project that has yielded some surprisingly positive results. But the native bee needs more State protection and those researching the species need more support, as Prof McCormack tells LORNA SIGGINS.
IRELAND’S native wild honeybee should be granting Professor Grace McCormack a free pass from stings – for life. The NUI Galway scientist has done much to spread awareness about its value, not least the fact that it still exists.
Wild colonies of honeybee have been all but wiped out in most of the rest of northern Europe, but Ireland’s sub-species, Apis mellifera mellifera, is surviving in its pure form.
Research led by Prof McCormack and colleagues at NUIG and Limerick Institute of Technology, which was published in 2017, confirmed that it is not extinct in Ireland.
Bizarrely, honeybees are not a protected species, due to EU trade laws and Ireland’s own legislation which classifies them as domestic animals. Yet there is every reason for them to be given protected status, given the threats posed by pesticides, imports of other strains of honeybees, and the consequent spread of the Varroa parasite, which can destroy entire colonies in several years.
Even Ireland’s all-island pollinator plan doesn’t cut honeybees much slack. It has not recognised the honeybee as a wild pollinator, Prof McCormack points out. State agencies aren’t as interested as they should be in its future, and yet it could prove to be a very important livestock for farmers who don’t necessarily want to produce beef.
When the Native Irish Honeybee Society (NIBS) was formed in 2012, it turned to Prof McCormack in NUIG’s school of natural sciences for help in providing scientific evidence in support of A. m. mellifera conservation and improvement.
One of their first joint ventures was to establish a breeding programme which could increase the number of honeybees in Ireland that are resistant to the Varroa mite. In addition, McCormack decided to follow up on reports of honeybees living in the wild from beekeepers and members of the public. Working with PhD student Keith Browne, Prof McCormack issued an appeal to citizen scientists in 2015 to report wild honeybee colonies.
The appeal was a great success, as over 200 reports of honeybee colonies in buildings, trees, walls and other cavities, extending from Dublin to Galway to Kerry to Fermanagh, were submitted.
Even better, it appeared that some of the wild free-living colonies had survived for over three years without human intervention – suggesting they had a resistance to Varroa, which can wipe out a colony within one to two years unless chemically treated.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
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