Beekeepers launch fundraiser to set up new honey house
Galway’s beekeepers are planning to kit-out a new honey house to cultivate honey and wax from the tens of thousands of bees in Clarinbridge.
Tribes Beekeepers, which was established in April 2013, continues to grow and now has over 70 members from all over Galway, including Oranmore, Athenry, Clarinbridge, Woodford, Headford, Gurteen, Loughrea, Ballymacward, Ballinakill and Annaghdown.
The hobby group meets weekly on Saturday mornings at rented premises owned by the Brothers of Charity at Kilcornan, Clarinbridge.
It gives classes about beekeeping for its members, as well as giving tips about keeping bees, and members take exams in beekeeping while there are also open days for the public.
Eoghan O’Riordan, a founding member of Tribes Beekeepers, explained that the group has four beehives in Kilcornan, which are looked after by members.
“Each beehive would have up to 50,000 bees per hive, in a good year, and one queen, who lays between 1,000 and 1,500 eggs per day, every day between the middle of February and October depending on the weather,” he explained.
The unseasonal summer was bad news for Galway bees, however.
“It was a bad year for honey production. June, July and August were wetter than you’d want. Honey production has picked up in September and October because the weather improved but overall it was a bad year . . . The number of bees is falling again as well. The honey bee is dying through neonicotinoids, which are pesticides and insecticides. This year, the numbers are falling again,” he said.
Bees are very important to the environment because many plants rely on them to pollinate.
Galway’s colony of beekeepers needs help to extract honey from their hives and to reuse the wax.
The organisation is currently fundraising in order to build a honey room at one of the four rooms it rents at Kilcornan.
The room will be fitted out in order to meet health and safety standards and will have equipment including stainless steel extractors and warmers.
The total cost of the project is about €15,000 and while Tribes Beekeepers has raised some of this including through grants from Galway County Council, it needs a further €6,000, which it is raising through crowd funding at Fundit. The fundit campaign is accepting donations up to next Thursday.
The group has thrown in a few honey-sweeteners in order to entice people to support the cause.
For €10 you can name a bee; €15 will get you a jar of honey; and €50 will get you membership of the beekeeping club. Donations of over €125 will receive membership and full beekeeping training courses.
More information is also available on its Facebook page.
Meanwhile, the treasurer of Tribes Beekeepers, Paul O’Brien from Maree, has recently been appointed as the PRO of the national beekeeping organisation, the Federation of Irish Beekeepers.