Nature on our doorsteps: Free-living honeybees

Rosaleen Dwyer is the County Heritage Officer at South Dublin County Council – every week she gives us an insight into the natural heritage around us and the beautiful biodiversity of the plants and creatures.

FOR centuries, honey bees have been managed by humans.

Beekeepers have cared for their hives so that they can collect the honey that the bees make during the season.

The beekeeper then ensures that the bees are protected from disease and bad weather, and in winter they feed them with plenty of sugary syrup to help the hive survive until springtime.

Honey bees and bumble bees are also used commercially for pollination, where they are released into greenhouses and polytunnels to pollinate food and flower crops.

Over the centuries, honey bees from Europe and elsewhere have been brought to Ireland by bee keepers.

Some of these have escaped into the wild, where they have inter bred with our own native honey bee.

Our native honey bee is the Dark North Western honey bee, sometimes called the Irish black bee.

This hive of free living honey bees occupies a space in a metal fence post.

It is said to be a hardy species, and it is well adapted to our cold winters.

They are also able to forage for food during our cool, often wet summers.

This is a very valuable characteristic as bees are important pollinators of crops like apples and strawberries.

The black honey bee is also said to be a relatively placid bee, unlike some other introduced species.

It was thought that Ireland’s native honey bee species had been almost fully replaced in the wild over the years by introduced species of commercial honey bees.

Some bee keepers, however, have worked hard to maintain hives of the Irish black bee, and wild hives of these bees are also known to still occur.

Wild honey bees are sometimes referred to as being free-living honey bees.

They make their nests in holes in trees or under the eaves of sheds and houses, and they maintain their populations completely unaided by bee keepers.

Because the black honey bee evolved over thousands of years in the wild, they are well adapted to changing environmental conditions.

This may make them more resilient than other honey bee species to the challenges now being posed by climate change.