Starting Beekeeping in Ireland - The No Nonsense Guide 2018 Edition

By Thomas Carroll

The book is a simple and straightforward text on how to start beekeeping in Ireland in 2018.  The book shows you why you should become a beekeeper and how to start.  The book links to many sources of valuable information online. The book will be of interest to budding beekeepers in Ireland, the UK and beyond.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Thomas Carroll
• Release date: Mar 26, 2018
• ISBN: 9781540128669

Book preview

Preface

How doth the little busy bee Improve each shining hour,

And gather honey all the day From every opening flower.

~ Isaac Watts, Against Idleness

This book is as much a guide to sources of additional information as it is a how to beekeeping guide.  There is a lot of bee related information available and I have compiled an impressive list of sources of additional information from an Irish centric perspective.  Why did I write this eBook?  The need for this book came to me when I searched for a simple and straightforward text on how to start beekeeping in Ireland. I was re-starting my beekeeping here in 2015.  I wanted a plain and straight to the point book which was up to date and appropriate in the Irish context.  I wanted a book at a sensible price which was available in electronic format (an eBook) which I could easily and quickly download and start reading.  I could not find or easily access a suitable publication to assist me and therefore decided to write the book myself to assist others who may be trying to start beekeeping.   

I had kept bees in Ireland during my teenage years and into my early twenties.   In 1993 I moved to Kenya to work as beekeeping officer with the Kenya Indigenous Forest Conservation Project.  I worked on beekeeping development in Eastern Africa until 2008.  I wrote the ‘Beginner’s Guide to Beekeeping in Kenya’ which was published in 2006.  I enjoy compiling information and writing about bees, beekeeping and beekeepers.  I would like to see more people get involved in beekeeping in Ireland and everywhere else for that matter.  In particular I would like to see more young people getting involved.  The average age of beekeepers is in the sixties.  I started when I was nine years old.  You can get involved in beekeeping at any age – young or old.  I also want to mention straight off that while beekeeping is dominated by men there are some excellent female beekeepers in Ireland the UK and internationally so at the outset I would also like to encourage more women to take up beekeeping.

The questions that I want to answer in writing this book are: ‘As a beginner in beekeeping in Ireland what do I need to know and do to get started with one or two beehives?’ and ‘What do I need to do to produce enough honey for my kitchen table and to give away to friends?’  The book is based on my own experience of starting with a small number of hives (4) in 2015 and supplying my own family with honey for the whole year with a surplus left over to give away to my friends (OK – I don’t have that many!).  It’s a great feeling to have a year’s supply of your own honey.  That is a nice objective for any beginner.  Most mornings I eat a bowl of steaming hot porridge with milk and a spoon of our own delicious honey drizzled on top.  I think to myself – what a blessing!  My wife will tell you that we rarely buy jam anymore.  What could be better than a slice of warm toast with butter and your own lovely honey? When you learn the wonderful health benefits of eating pure unheated raw honey you will appreciate having your own honey.  Much of the honey from the big packers in the supermarket is heated and filtered with the aim of extending shelf life rather than preserving the natural medicinal properties of the honey.  You simply cannot beat honey direct from your own hives or direct from your local beekeeper. 

Simplicity is my guiding philosophy.  I don’t want to open bee hives any more than is absolutely necessary to get a half decent crop of honey.  I really enjoy having bees and producing my own honey but I do not for the most part enjoy opening hives and unsettling my bees.  I much prefer to leave them alone as much as I can and just enjoy having beehives in my garden.  I also don’t enjoy spending cash on my beekeeping!  They say beekeepers are frugal and I agree with that philosophy 100%.  I don’t particularly need to breed queen bees or any other complicated beekeeping manipulations.  If you asked me the internal measurements of a beehive I would be comfortable to tell you that I don’t know.  I just want to keep bees as easily, cheaply and simply as possible and produce enough delicious honey for myself, my family and friends.  If you are of a like mind to me then this book is for you.

Our life is frittered away by detail... simplify, simplify.

Henry David Thoreau

I also know that starting anything new is very hard (my other great interest in life is psychology).  You will pass through a learning curve where it seems hard and you might even want to give up.  Know that this is normal for someone starting anything new.  Doing new things takes you out of your comfort zone.  You don’t know what to do, who to talk to or where to go for help.  You worry about making a mistake, being hard done-by or looking foolish in some way.  It feels like being a child again and learning to walk all over again.  When you talk to other beekeepers they all have their own particular ideas and opinions and varying ways of doing things on all aspects of beekeeping.  You can easily feel confused or overwhelmed with the varying opinions on the right way to keep bees and the amount of information available online or in books.  Google beekeeping and you will find so much information.  As a beginner it is impossible to know which information is appropriate to you in your local context. 

The end result might be that you feel that it’s all very confusing and you put off starting and tell yourself – ‘I will start beekeeping next year’.  Don’t. Learning without practice really isn’t going to do you much good.  With this book I want to give you a roadmap and the confidence and encouragement to get started successfully with bees and in the simplest way while minimising expenditure.  Once you get started and have some bees then you can read much more and deepen your beekeeping knowledge.  Once you successfully start beekeeping you can delve into queen rearing and other more advanced practices if you choose to.  Personally I am not that much attracted but there are beekeepers who delight in complicated manipulations of bees.

Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated. 

Confucius

Am I a great beekeeper?  According to some people’s definition I may not be.  I am not interested in squeezing every last drop of honey out of a bee colony.   In this book I am not trying to impress you by showing you how much I know about bees.  I finally realised that I don’t know that much.  In fact I mess up quite a bit.  Bee colonies swarm on me when they are not supposed to and some die on me during the winter.  You can spend a lifetime learning the intricacies of beekeeping.  I am not a beekeeping obsessive – I really like beekeeping but don’t stay awake at night thinking about it and I have other varied interests in life as well such as psychology, technology, gardening and nature. 

As regards my background and experience I mentioned that I worked on beekeeping development in Africa.  I have worked in such countries as Kenya, Uganda, South Sudan and Somalia promoting and training local people on beekeeping.  In these countries people have little money to spend on their beekeeping and a simple, uncomplicated, low cost, self-reliant approach to beekeeping is very important.    My experience forces me to think how to strip away the unnecessary and get back to basics.

This book is an unofficial guide and is not sanctioned or endorsed by any Irish beekeeping organisation.  This book is simply my own effort to get information into the hands of those starting out in beekeeping.  The great thing about this day and age is that I didn’t need anyone’s permission to write this book.  I saw what I felt was a need and I wrote the book to hopefully go some way to addressing that need. 

Why do we need more beekeepers in Ireland and elsewhere?  Well, pollinators are under threat.   Honeybees are under threat. Our environment and planet is under threat.  I really like bees and I am passionate about the environment we live in.  I love honey as a wonderful food.  I know the more people keeping bees then the better the environment we will have.  Beekeepers in my experience are great environmentalists.  They are people aware of the health of our environment.  They are people at the forefront of conservation.  They are aware of issues such as the use of noxious chemicals and safe food.  They are people advocating for the conservation of our natural environment and out planting trees and other bee forage plants.  As I mentioned beekeeping is a great lens through which to look at how we interact with our environment.  The more beekeepers we have in Ireland and the world then the better off we will all be and the quality of our environment and the quality of our lives will improve.

There are a few pieces of advice that I want to give you right at the beginning.  Read this book and the associated references to get a basic understanding of what is involved in beekeeping. The next and most important piece of advice is to join your local beekeeping association and get to know your local beekeeping community.  While at your association ask them if they run a beginner’s course in beekeeping and then sign up for it.  If they don’t run a beginners course they will know where the nearest one is.

I am a member of Dunamaise beekeepers in Co. Laois and that is where I go for support and advice when I need it.  Beekeepers in my experience really delight in helping beginners and talking about their bees.  Please ask local beekeepers for help and give them the opportunity to help and mentor you.  Don’t worry about going to a beekeeper’s meeting and not knowing anyone.  They will be delighted to welcome you.  You can strike up a conversation with anyone in the room by asking them how their bees are doing and they will be happy to have the opportunity to talk about theirs bees, the weather and the flowers.

The last piece of advice is, with the guidance of your local association, to jump in and get a colony of bees.  I meet beginners attending training courses who have no bees.  They tell me that they will get bees next year when they have more knowledge.  However the only way to truly learn beekeeping is to get some bees and begin.  No matter how much you study driving theory you will never be able to drive until you actually get in a car and do it.  The same for keeping bees – you need to get bees.  Be prepared to make mistakes and learn from them.  The bees are your best teachers.  Without your own bees you cannot really learn anything and it will all be theory.  There are some people who take a more cautions approach and say that beginners need education and experience first before getting bees.  I say get the education, someone to support you and get the bees as well.  Get them all in sequence – don’t wait around too long before getting your bees.

I have spent over two years researching and writing this eBook.  I hope that you find it useful and helpful.  I would be delighted to hear from you and to get your feedback.

Thank you once again for downloading and reading this book.  I want to take this opportunity to wish you well as you embark on your exciting life changing beekeeping journey and hope that reading this book will help you on your way to starting and enjoying beekeeping for very many years to come.

Tom Carroll PhD,

Killenure Nursery,

Ballybrittas,

Co Laois.

[e-mail]

https://www.facebook.com/nononsensebeekeeping/

https://www.facebook.com/pureirishhoney/

www.apiconsult.com

Start by doing what's necessary; then do what's possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.

Francis of Assisi

NOTE:  The book is not illustrated with pictures etc.  The reason is that there are so many pictures and videos available on the internet and you just have to Google anything you want to see.  If you want to see a queen bee then google ‘Queen Bee’ and click on Images and you will see lots of pictures.  Click on the Videos tab and you will see many videos of queen bees.  The information is already out there in the bucket loads.  This book aims to help you focus on what is necessary to know to get started in the Irish context, and point you to further sources of relevant information.

Disclaimer: Although the author has made every effort to ensure that the information in this book was correct at the time of writing, the author does not assume and hereby disclaims any liability to any party for any loss, damage, or disruption caused by errors or omissions, whether such errors or omissions result from negligence, accident, or any other cause.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my wife Jane (a beekeeper herself) for her support in writing this book and my sons Mick, Kieran and James (who love eating delicious home-produced honey!).

I would like to thank the committee and the members of Dunamaise Beekeepers Association in Co. Laois.  In particular I would like to thank Tom Hussey who runs a beginner’s course at the club each year and who is always very generous in sharing his time and considerable knowledge on bees with myself and others.

Thanks to Sean Byrne of North Kildare Beekeepers for his sustained interest and effort to support beekeeping development in Kenya.

Thanks to my colleagues in the African Beekeeping Resource Centre (ABRC) and in particular Chris Davey who is an accomplished beekeeper in the UK as well as Cornelius Kasisi and Fred Otieno my Kenyan beekeeping colleagues.

Thanks to those who support beekeeping development work in Africa.  In particular I would like to thank Gorta Self Help Africa for their work to support the development of beekeeping in East Africa.   Also the Franciscan Brothers and all the great work they do to train small scale beekeepers in both Kenya and Uganda.  I would like to thank Br Tony Dolan in particular for his selfless efforts to promote sustainable agriculture and rural development to help the small scale farmers of Eastern Africa.

Thanks to Dr. Jim Kinsella in University College Dublin for his support and mentoring of my beekeeping research.

Introduction

The lark is up to meet the sun,

The bee is on the wing;

The ant its labor has begun,

The woods with music ring.

Shall birds, and bees, and ants, be wise,

While I my moments waste?

O let me with the morning rise,

And to my duty haste.

Wm. Holmes McGuffey, McGuffey's Eclectic Primer; (1848)

The contents of this book explain why beekeeping is a great activity to get into and cover the basics of what you need to know to start beekeeping in an Irish context.  The book will direct you to many helpful sources of further information and assistance. 

The philosophy of simplicity which is at the core of the book will help beekeepers in any country.   The book is aimed at those who want to get started with a hive or two and who want to produce some wonderful honey for their family and friends.  It is for people who want the basics of how to produce honey without too much information and without having to check their bees more than necessary.  Others might not be too concerned about producing honey and might just want to keep bees for the joy of just having bees and the benefits they bring in terms of pollination and that is also great.  I salute you for wanting to keep bees and contributing to a better environment for all of us.

The book gives an overview of beekeeping in Ireland and also the broad approaches to keeping bees.  The book then goes on to cover where to put your apiary, where to source bees and types of beehives and other equipment you need.  Bees do sting and as a beginner you might have safety concerns about keeping bees and these are specifically covered in the section on siting your apiary.  It is also important to note that a small percentage of people are allergic to bee stings and this important issue is also discussed. 

Next is an introduction to bee biology and an overview of bee management.  Issues around bee health are discussed, bee forage plants in Ireland and the typical beekeeping year is outlined.  The next chapter deals with bee products – your honey and beeswax etc. and how to harvest, process and package them. The last chapter covers the beekeeping supports available from an Irish perspective and where you can go for further information and assistance.  Throughout the book are clickable links to additional useful resources. Remember my aim in writing this book is to give you enough information to get you going without overwhelming you with too much unnecessary information. 

In everything, love simplicity. 

Saint Francis de Sales

Chapter 1:  A little bit about bees

It is always a good idea to know a little bit of background about bees in general and honeybees (Apis mellifera) which is the particular species of bee we are mostly interested in.  What I have included here is a basic introduction.  There is no need to overburden you at this stage with too many details.  No doubt in the future when you get hooked on keeping these wonderful insects you will want to read much more!

According to Biodiversity Ireland (All-Ireland Pollinator Plan 2015-2020) there are 98 bee species in Ireland in total.  There are 20 species of bumblebee and 77 species of solitary bees plus our own honeybee (Apis mellifera) which is the focus of this book.

Honeybees and bumblebees are highly social insects, living in colonies with a queen, some males and large numbers of female workers, while solitary bees prefer to live alone, although some species build their nest in little groups. The mechanism for over wintering also varies between the bee species. Honeybees successfully maintain their colony throughout the year, while in bumblebee species only the young queen survives, emerging in the spring after hibernation. Solitary bees take one year to complete their life cycle and may only survive two weeks as an adult, thus these species over winter as pupae (in cocoons) and in the following spring the young adults emerge, mate and the cycle begins again.

Honeybees (Apis mellifera) are widely distributed in the world and are found in Ireland, the UK, throughout Europe, Africa, and parts of western Asia, as well as in the Americas. This species is generally referred to as the common, European or western honeybee.  The western honey bee is the most widespread managed pollinator in the world, and globally there are about 81 million hives producing an estimated 1.6 million tonnes of honey annually (IPBES, 2016).  Apis mellifera is the species of bee you will be keeping as you start keeping bees in Ireland.  The genus Apis is Latin for bee, and mellifera comes from Latin melli- honey and ferre to bear—hence the scientific name means honey-bearing bee. The name was coined in 1758 by Carolus Linnaeus. 

In other parts of the world there are other species of honeybees such as the giant honeybee (Apis dorsata), the Indian honeybee (Apis laboriosa), the Asian honeybee (Apis cerana) and the little honeybee (Apis florea).  None of these species are found in Ireland and our interest is solely on Apis mellifera.  Close relatives of the honeybees (Apis) mentioned above are the orchid bees (Euglossini), bumblebees (Bombini), and stingless bees (Meliponinae).  I am familiar with stingless bees from my work in Africa where stingless bee honey is prized as a medicine.  The honey from stingless bees is very sweet and very liquid compared to the honey from honeybees.  The species of stingless bee I have seen in Kenya look like small flies and store their honey in little pots unlike honeybees which store honey in a comb.

Coming back to Ireland the only other bee which is commercially used here (for pollination purposes only) is a species of Bumblebee (Bombus terrestris).  The Bumble Bee is larger than the honeybee, furrier and generally black with varying degrees of yellow/red banding across the end of their tails.

The best indicator of changes in the wild bee population is Ireland’s Bumble Bee Monitoring Scheme. Apparently Ireland was the first country in the world to develop a national Bumble Bee Monitoring Scheme and a number of other countries have since followed us.  

About 1,450 bumblebee hives are being imported into Ireland per annum (Teagasc, 2012), mainly to the East and Southeast, for pollination of horticultural crops.  Imported bumblebees are used in the pollination of crops such as tomatoes, strawberries and top fruit.  A Dutch company is a leading supplier of bumblebees.  Drift from imported bumblebee colonies poses a significant disease transmission and hybridisation risk for our native bumblebees (Teagasc, 2012).

Honeybees (Apis mellifera)

As mentioned in the last section, honeybees are social insects and have a strict division of labour between the various types (or castes) of bees in the colony. Colonies include a queen, drones and workers. The queen is the only sexually developed female in the colony and is the largest bee in the colony.  As you develop your beekeeping skills you will become better at finding the queen in a bee colony.  I always get a small buzz of excitement every time I see the queen.  She is a beautiful long and elegant insect and stands out from the other bees in the colony.  She will usually be surrounded by worker bees which act subserviently around her.

The queen is responsible for laying eggs that will grow into new workers, drones, and every once in a while a new queen. A productive queen can lay perhaps 1,200 to 2,000 eggs in a day.  The queen is an especially important individual in the colony, as she is the only actively reproductive female and generally lays all the eggs.

Drones are male bees that have no stingers. Their sole purpose is to mate with the queen. If the colony is short on food, drones are often kicked out of the hive (bees in Ireland will throw out all the drones in September to die before the winter).  

Workers are the smallest bees in the colony and are sexually undeveloped females. A colony can have 50,000 to 60,000 workers. The lifespan of a worker is approximately 30 days (more in the winter months). Workers feed the queen and larva, guard the hive, and keep it cool. Workers collect nectar to make honey. Workers are responsible for the production of all the products produced such as honey and beeswax.

Have a look at Encyclopaedia Britannica and become familiar with shapes of the different castes of bees (the queen, drone and workers).

Honeybee sub-species

There are 26 different sub-species or races of the common or European honeybee (Apis mellifera).  These sub-species or races are adapted to local environments.  In Ireland the native sub-species of honeybee is Apis mellifera mellifera – know usually in beekeeping circles as the ‘native Irish bee’ or ‘black bee’.  It is also called the Dark European Honeybee.

Apart from Apis mellifera mellifera there are other different subspecies of Apis mellifera which have originated in Europe (A. mellifera ligustica, A. mellifera carnica, A. mellifera caucasica), Africa (Apis mellifera scutellata and Apis mellifera capensis) and the Middle East and Asia (A. mellifera macedonica).  This is just to mention a few of the sub-species.  There are many other sub-species (at least 20).

One particular sub-species of Apis mellifera I know very well is the African bee – Apis mellifera scutellata.  These bees generally look like our own native black bees but are slightly smaller and with orange or yellow bands on their abdomen.  Around the hive entrance they appear much more active than our bees here in Ireland.  They appear to dart into and out of the hive entrance much faster than our native Irish bees.  One major difference however is that A.m. scutellata are very defensive (they readily sting in defence of their nest).  You dare not open a colony in the middle of the day unless you are well away from people and animals and are well protected.  Mostly A.m. scutellata are opened late evening or after dark using torchlight.  When I came to re-start my beekeeping in Ireland in 2015 my Irish bees (Apis mellifera mellifera) were a little defensive.  However I simply could not see that they were defensive as I was so used to African bees!  To me the Irish bees were still mild compared to the African bees I was used to in Kenya.  Apis mellifera scutellata is the same species as our bee here in Ireland and looks like our bees but behaves totally differently and requires very different management.  There is an important lesson here.  Bees may look the same but behave differently.  Unfortunately many well intentioned charities have tried to introduce European style beekeeping to Africa which simply does not work with African bees.  The bees there are simply too defensive to make intensive management feasible for the majority of beekeepers.  The lesson here is that although they look the same, there are big differences between sub-species of honeybee (Apis mellifera) and it is important to understand the race of honeybee that you are keeping.  It also important to keep a race of bee that is locally adapted and understand your local environment.  Local knowledge is king in beekeeping! 

Sub-species of honeybees in Ireland

This is where it gets more interesting and more sensitive!  From what I have experienced the sub-species or breed of bee you keep is quite an emotive issue amongst beekeepers in Ireland at the moment.  When it comes to beekeepers keeping different types of bees, it is a bit like belonging to different religions and the passionate positions people take are not always based on fact.  Proponents of different sub-species of bees tend to believe that they are right and that their breed of bee is the best.  All I can advise is to keep an open mind on the subject and keep learning! 

Most importantly as a beginner follow the advice of experienced beekeepers at your local beekeeping association.  They will direct you to a reliable bee supplier.  The most important thing as a beginner is that you get some nice gentle bees of a similar type to everyone else locally so that you fit right in with everyone else.  In the rest of this section we look at some of the common types of honeybee you might hear about as you start beekeeping in Ireland.  The native Irish honeybee/bees which are predominantly native or what is known as ‘near-native’ would be the most commonly kept bee race in Ireland.  Recent and ongoing research work by an organisation called NIBHS (Native Irish Honeybee Society) and the Limerick Institute of Technology (LIT) shows that there is a relatively pure population of native bees present on the Island of Ireland.  That is good news and shows that we have a population of bees adapted to conditions on our Island which are worth protecting. 

There are small areas around the country where other bees such as Buckfast are kept.  I personally have not worked with other types of bees in Ireland apart from local bees which I consider to be native black bees.  When I restarted beekeeping here in 2015 the bees I purchased were from a reputable supplier of native black bees.  For now I don’t see myself using any other type of bee because our local beekeeping association is aiming to establish a voluntary conservation area for native black bees. 

Native Irish honeybee (Apis mellifera mellifera)

There are beekeepers who are passionate advocates of the Native Black bee (Apis mellifera mellifera).  The Native Irish Honeybee Society (NIHBS) is an organisation set up in Ireland to promote the conservation of the native bee.  Perhaps the most well know local effort to select and breed native bees in Ireland is the Galtee Bee Breeding Group in the Galtee/Vee valley and surrounding areas of South Tipperary.

Research is being conducted in the University of Limerick and the National University of Ireland Galway (NUIG) to determine the proportion of our bees which are truly native honeybees.  This is because other sub-species of honeybee from other parts of Europe have been imported into Ireland over many decades and these bees have mated and hybridised with our native bee population.  As mentioned earlier the results of this research show that we do have a relatively pure population of native black bees present on the Island of Ireland which is worth protecting.

Those promoting the native black bee give the following reasons to keep this sub-species:

It is adapted to our particular wet Irish climate

It is said to be more frugal with food stores over the winter

It flies at lower temperatures

It flies in wetter conditions (very useful in our wet Irish summers!)

It is a declining subspecies

Mixing of other subspecies causes bees to be more defensive (i.e. they will sting you much more)

Importation of other subspecies of bees leads to the possibility of introduction of new bee pests and diseases into Ireland (we have enough of these already and we don’t need any more!  See Chapter 9 to read about possible pest threats from abroad).

In the UK there is an organisation similar to NIHBS called the Bee Improvement and Bee Breeders Association (BIBBA).  BIBBA’s stated aim is the conservation, reintroduction, study, selection and improvement of native or near-native honeybees of Britain and Ireland.  There is also an international association (of which NIHBS and BIBBA are members) devoted to the protection of Apis mellifera mellifera called Societas Internationalis pro Conservatione Apis melliferae melliferae (SICAMM for short). In English the name means the International Association for the Protection of the Dark European Bee. 

Other bee races and hybrids in Ireland

There are other races/breeds of honey bees you might hear about as a beekeeper in Ireland. 

Some Irish beekeepers keep non-native races of bees but I don’t know the percentage of beekeepers that do so. 

The problem with keeping other races of bee other than our native bee is that you have to re-queen every year or two to keep the same genetics that you want.  If you allow the bees to replace queens themselves then you will end up with locally mated queens which result in very defensive bee colonies (i.e. they