In 2019, my cousin Tom - a fantastic beekeeper (with his wife Lillie and help from my aunt Nan) at O'Sullivan Honey invited me to come and help with harvesting his honey.
It was an amazing experience and in no time I was hooked! I did an evening course at a local (ish) college and started with a hive of my own... The rest, as they say, is history. I only have a few hives and am a total amateur - though I learn more every year. Keeping these few hives has made me a passionate advocate for the bio-diversity honey bees, bumble bees, wild and solitary bees – as well as all other animals and humans - depend on. While I always avoided pesticides in my gardening, I have become much more aware of their damage and more careful in how I garden - abandoning neatness for wild areas where bees and other insects and animals can thrive (that's my excuse anyway). When I came to write the next Lola book, of course I had to take her to visit an Apiary - where she meets Zora the beekeeper and learns about honey bees.
And if you want to know more about Zora, and some inspirational Black beekeepers, click here. |
Attending the Beekeeping course at Collis Sands, Tralee
MENU...
Click on the links below to find out more...
Ros and Anna make a research visit to an Apiary Where to put a hive? The HIVE in detail Inside the Hive Bee Foraging Extracting the honey |
Do check back (and refresh pages) - I'm always adding more stuff. For some reason, the videos on my pages don't always play well (my IT skills?) so I'm gradually loading them onto my YouTube page and adding links for each one. So if you have any problems, just click on the link and hopefully you'll be taken to the same video on You Tube AND it will play!