Bee Alert June 24, 2007
Posted by Graham in : Bees , 3commentsWhen local West Cork Bee Guru Tim Rowe booked the a hall in Bantry a couple of weeks ago for a talk by Mary Coffey from the Oak Park Research Centre in Carlow, he hadn’t quite bargained on the huge amount of local interest. The chairs in the small room booked for the talk quickly filled up and we had to move into the hall next door as over 100 bee-keepers and bee-enthusiasts from the local area turned out to hear what Mary had to say about Varroa and Colony Collapse Disorder.
Tim asked Mary to come and speak to us after conducting a survey of West Cork Bee-keepers in which he has found that about half of 1000 hives he has surveyed have died out or “collapsed” this year. (more…)
Bitter-sweet Harvest May 17, 2007
Posted by Graham in : Bees, Food, Gardens , 3commentsWest Cork bee-keeper Tim Rowe kindly sent me this article he has written highlighting the plight of bees and bee-keepers on account of widespread Colony Collapse Syndrome:
BITTER-SWEET HARVEST – a beekeeper’s year.
It’s been a strange year. Last summer the honey harvest from my bees weighed over half a ton. That’s stacks and stacks of wooden boxes all stuffed with dripping honeycombs, gloriously pungent and sticky. It came as a culmination of a whole lot of work – some of it by me. 
below: Tim at his house near Bantry
The bees had been collecting nectar from early spring, increasing in numbers in time for the main flows of clover and blackberry and heather. At the peak we all worked from dawn to dusk, they in vast numbers frenetically hurtling back and forth, me struggling round in my sweaty bee-suit controlling swarms and adding supers to hives as tall as me. (more…)
