Beekeeping is first recorded in Ireland in the seventh century. It has seen a surge in popularity in modern times, with the membership of beekeeping associations exceeding 4,500. The median average number of hives per beekeeper is three hives, while the average honey output per hive is 11.4 kg (25 lb). The growth in the practice has occurred despite increased pressures on bees and beekeepers due to habitat loss, parasites and diseases, which has contributed to deaths approaching half of all honeybees in Ireland.

History

Some beekeepers have suggested that honey bees could have flown across a post-glacial land bridge between Great Britain and Ireland. However the current academic consensus since 1983 is that this could not have occurred, because there was no land bridge between the two islands, based on evidence including computer models and marine geological research.

Further, there is no evidence of beeswax in Neolithic pottery vessels in Ireland, although such evidence is widespread across Europe as close as the lower reaches of the Thames. Neolithic cire perdue bronze castings from this period are very few in Ireland..

Also in the 3rd century AD, Solinus mentioned that Ireland (Hibernia) had no bees.

The earliest reference to bees in Ireland is in the Bechbretha (Old Irish for "Bee-judgements") of the Brehon Laws, composed after 637 AD. Among other issues, these dealt with the ownership and value of swarms, the compensation paid by the beekeeper to a person stung by one of his bees and the compensation paid to the beekeeper if a person's hens began eating his bees. The Bechbrethas bee judgements are unique in treating bee swarms as capable of trespass. This is related to their treatment of other livestock, but no other legal system applies the concept to bees, and it may be taken as evidence that the authors of the Bechbretha were trying to fit the new facts about bees into their longstanding legal ideas about livestock in general.

The Bechbretha gives Old Irish words, mil for honey and mid for mead; later versions from the ninth and tenth centuries contain the Old Irish word tarbsaithe meaning "cast swarm", an act performed only by honey bees. These are cognate with Indo-European forms across Europe and beyond, and they are very close to the same words in early Welsh. The Old Irish language includes the Latin loanword for beeswax céir, from the Latin ceris (only small amounts of wax can be obtained from the nests of bumble bees), suggesting the presence of honeybees near to the arrival of Christianity in 430 AD, and then for the word beehive lestar which may also be derived from a Welsh word, suggesting beekeeping was probably not established until the 5th or 6th centuries. This time frame matches with the legend of St. Modomnoc, whom it is claimed first brought bees to Ireland from Wales in the early 540s, just as the extreme weather events of 535–536 were subsiding. After the 7th century, Irish bronze founders became masters of the cire perdue technique.

A "great mortality of bees" was recorded in 950 AD, and again in 992 AD when it was said that "bees were largely kept in Ireland at this time, and were a great source of wealth to the people". In 1443 AD "the third epizooty (disease outbreak) of bees" was recorded.

The first beekeeping book in Ireland was written in 1733, Instructions for Managing Bees. It included recommendations for the use of skeps and stipulated the best size to use to encourage at least one swarm per year with two afterswarms. The bees would traditionally have been killed at the end of each season to be able to extract the honey and wax. By the mid-1700s, beekeepers started using boxes for keeping bees, and using different methods to extract the honey and wax without killing the bees.

In the 1870s, Brother Joseph, a Carmelite friar from Loughrea, imported a bar and frame hive from London and then began to produce his own versions. He is also recorded as being one of the first to import the Ligurian Italian honey bee (A. m. ligustica) with a view to selective breeding "..as being more prolific.. and harder workers.. would improve our home breed (the Irish strain of A. m. mellifera)". In 1881, the Reverend George Proctor was believed to be the first in the country to own Langstroth Hives (invented in 1852) with their moveable frames, upon which subsequent modern hives are based.

Population history No DNA research on honey bees in collections dating to before the Isle of Wight disease has been carried out. The honey bee population during that time is described as the "Old Irish Black Bee".

Isle of Wight Disease (IoWD)

Acarine, or as it was known at the time, Isle of Wight Disease (IoWD), was first reported on the Isle of Wight in 1906, where it wiped out 75% of the bee colonies in the first year. By 1912, the IoWD had arrived on the east coast of Ireland. It steadily spread throughout the island over the next decade. In 1919, bees were exported from County Tipperary to English beekeepers; however, these Irish bees also died. By 1923, "the country was swept clean of bees". By 1927 the Irish Beekeepers Association (IBA) requested the government to adopt a restocking scheme for re-population and for "importation of (resistant) Queen Bees for re-sale at reduced prices." Many of the local bee associations had already begun importing their stocks. The majority of the bees were Dutch A. m. mellifera, with their characteristic tendency to swarm.

In 1921, the cause of the IoWD was believed to have been identified as the Acarapis woodi a tracheal mite. Bees with larger tracheas appear to be more susceptible to Acarapis woodi mite infestation, and the A. m. mellifera is considered to be a larger bee with its attendant larger trachea than other European honey bees.

In 1945, Brother Adam, the breeder of the Buckfast bee, obtained "pure native" Old Irish Black Bee queens that had survived the Acarine epidemic "from a secluded place in the far west of Ireland," from which he raised virgin Queens and then crossed them with his Buckfast drones known to be resistant to Acarine, at his isolated Closed Mating Station on Dartmoor. However, like the British Black Bee, from which it descended, all died from Acarine. In 1983 Brother Adam wrote, "the old English (and by inference Irish) brown bee... lives today only in the memory... and was completely wiped out."

Possible survivors of the IoWD Modern DNA analysis has shown that nearly 98% of the DNA of honey bees in Ireland are the Apis mellifera mellifera subspecies (European dark bee). They are mainly of Dutch origin, with smaller amounts of DNA originating from France, Switzerland and elsewhere in Europe. Analysis of the mitochondrial DNA showed that the bees tested were descended from imported European Queens.Jack Hassett, Keith A Browne, Grace P McCormack, Elizabeth Moore, Native Irish Honey Bee Society, Gabrielle Soland & Michael Geary (2018) A significant pure population of the dark European honey bee (Apis mellifera mellifera) remains in Ireland, Journal of Apicultural Research, 57:3, 337-350, DOI: 10.1080/00218839.2018.1433949 https://doi.org/10.1080/00218839.2018.1433949 accessed 12.1.2022 The bees contained over 97% purity of A. m. mellifera DNA, showing little introgression from other European subspecies. Bees kept by members of the Native Irish Honey Bee Society (NIHBS) have minimal genetic traces of the honey bees from before the IoWD.

Some NIHBS members now acknowledge, as a result of the imports after the IoWD, the presence of Dutch DNA in the bees in Ireland, but at the same time maintain that there are descendants of the indigenous Irish bees somewhere in Ireland. Some bees from the Beara peninsula have unusual genetic markers, and there has been speculation that this may represent a remnant of the pre-IoWD population.

Other groups suggest that whatever the genetic stock may represent, these attempts will result in inbreeding, to the long-term detriment of the population.

Native honey bee status Legal status Both the Republic of Ireland and the U.K. (which Northern Ireland is part of) are parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, and as such officially have adopted the international definitions of an "Alien (Non-Native) Species... (as) a subspecies... introduced... outside its natural or present distribution... by human agency", and also an "Invasive Alien (Non-Native) Species... whose introduction... threaten biological diversity". These definitions have also been adopted by EU Regulation which has been incorporated into the Republic of Ireland's and the U.K. (Northern Ireland) legislation (still retained after the UK's departure from the EU).

Making the Apis mellifera (the honey bee) an introduced / Non-Native species, but not an Invasive Species, as it does not threaten bio-diversity. Within Northern Ireland there is the acceptance that some Non-Native animals, such as Honey Bees, are "important to the economy", while within the Republic of Ireland, the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine's website refers to the honey bee, and in particular the sub-species A. m. mellifera as the "Native Irish Honey Bee", contradicting the EU's and the Republic of Ireland's definitions of native/alien species in their own legislation.

DNA status In 2017 DNA research was performed on beehives throughout Ireland, finding that the honey bees (except those on Beara peninsula) had been imported (primarily from The Netherlands) around 1923 due to the IoWD eradicating the indigenous honey bee population.

Honeybee pests and diseases

Varroa

Presently, the Varroa destructor mite is the single greatest threat to bee colonies in Ireland. In the 1990s, colonies would die within three to four years if left untreated. By the 2000s, this had become closer to two years. Typically after the initial infestation, there can be a rapid increase in the mite population which would lead to colony collapse. Varroa mites arrived in the Republic of Ireland in 1998, in Northern Ireland in 2002 and within a few years had spread throughout most of the island. The mortality rate for over-wintered colonies during 2015–16 in the Republic of Ireland was 29.5% and for Northern Ireland was 28.2%; for comparison Wales was 22.4% and Scotland was 18%, while the European average was 12%. As a result of Varroa, wild colonies do not survive for long; feral colonies, swarms that have escaped from apiaries, will die quickly. However, their homes can be re-occupied afterward by new swarms for the cycle to repeat. These feral colonies can become a source of large Varroa populations. The fact that Varroa has shown resistance to previously effective treatments can result in regional losses as high as 40–60%.

Widely-spread feral colonies in tree hives in a forest environment have been found to be able to survive with Varroa on a long-term basis, however these bees are not A. m. mellifera as is common in Ireland and these colonies do not suppress Varroa reproduction and the reason for their survival is unclear. In another case of surviving untreated colonies, the Varroa acts as a host to a non-lethal Deformed Wing Virus (DWV).

Conventional advice is to continually manage the Varroa mite population, a counter approach would be to breed bees that allegedly remove and kill Varroa mites in the hope that such colonies will not need treatment against the Varroa mite and in turn may survive in the wild. GBBG, NIHBS and FIBKA have breeding programs to do this "by observing the number of damaged mites", without DNA analysis nor the use of instrumental insemination.