URBAN FARMER:After two years of planning, two hives of bees have arrived in the garden's new apiary, writes FIONNUALA FALLON

WHEN 20,000 one-time inhabitants of Co Offaly took up residence in the OPW’s walled Victorian garden a couple of weeks ago, only to be joined a few days later by a 50,000-strong crowd from Co Tipperary, their arrival was so surprisingly discreet and their presence so politely unobtrusive that most visitors to the garden were barely aware of it.

And while the especially keen-eyed might since have wondered at the very large numbers of honeybees that can be seen feasting on the garden’s flowers (especially its dahlias), very few will have guessed that the walled garden (or more accurately, the almost-hidden “slip garden” that is an annexe of the walled garden) is now home to two brand new hives of bees. These are both housed – rather swankily – in their very own, custom-made apiary.

And so a project that has been two years in the offing and which has enthralled and excited every person involved has finally been brought to fruition.

Or perhaps the more accurate description should be “near fruition”, because visitors to the garden will still have to wait until next year and the completion of some very necessary hard-landscaping work to be given access to the slip garden and the timber-clad apiary containing the two hives.

In the meantime, readers might be happy to know that the Offaly and Tipperary bees – all 70,000 of them – are settling in very nicely. “We’re noticing them everywhere in the garden but particularly feeding on the single-flowered dahlias, which they seem to love,” remarks Brian, who although a relative newcomer to beekeeping in comparison to the far-more experienced Meeda, is every bit as enthusiastic about the honeybees’ recent arrival.

As a highly experienced, knowledgeable and skillful apiarist, it was Michael Gleeson who had the all-important job of sourcing the bees for the walled garden (as well as for the nearby Áras garden).

“I was introduced to Dr McCullen (chief park superintendent with the OPW) last year at the Bloom show and I said to him: ‘Isn’t it an awful loss that you haven’t got bees in here?’ And he smiled at me and said ‘Actually, you’re the very man I wanted to talk to about that,’” remembers Michael, who went on to advise the OPW on the siting of the walled garden’s hives as well as the construction of the unusual timber-and-glass apiary.

“The apiary allows visitors to safely watch the bees at work without interfering with their line of flight, as its design forces the bees coming and going from the hives to fly steeply upwards and over its walls.”

But why Offaly and Tipperary bees in particular? “I went to the people that I knew were top-class bee breeders producing good quality, docile, native honeybees – the dark Irish honeybee or Apis mellifera mellifera to give it its proper name. So the Offaly bees come from John Summerville in Tullamore while the Tipperary bees are from Gerry and Mary Ryan in Dundrum,” explains Michael, who thinks it very likely that bees were kept in the walled garden during its late-19th-century heyday.

“I would strongly suspect there was a stock of bees in the garden because bee-keeping was a very important part of good garden husbandry during Victorian times. In fact, the very first Irish bee-keeping association was founded in the RDS back in 1881.”

But whatever about the possibility of bees being kept in the walled kitchen garden during the Victorian era, it was fascinating to discover that they were definitely kept there as recently as the late 1970s, when the Dublin-based beekeeper Tom Keogh got permission from the Papal Nuncio (who was then occupying the nearby but now demolished Ashtown Lodge) to install a few hives. “It was all very overgrown back then, nothing like what it is today,” recalls Tom, who at one time also kept hives in the gardens of the American Ambassador’s residence. “But I still remember how delicious the honey was. The bees were collecting nectar from the park’s lime trees so the honey had this wonderfully distinctive flavour.”

As for the walled garden’s two newly-installed hives of bees, it will be next year before Meeda and Brian begin to collect any honey.

“Even with well-established hives, you’d usually stop harvesting honey some time around August,” explains Meeda. “And whereas the Tipperary bees arrived as a full colony, the Offaly bees came as a ‘nucleus’– just six brood frames rather than the usual 11. When you set up any new hive like that, the bees initially need feeding to help them to build up a strong colony and get them through the winter.

Any honey they produce in the meantime will be used to keep them alive. So we’ll wait until next spring, probably sometime around April, to put the supers on. But with such a variety of flowers, herbs and trees growing in the garden and the park, it should be lovely honey.”

As secretary of the Irish Federation of Beekeepers, Michael Gleeson has noticed a sharp increase in its membership numbers over the past few years.

“This year, it stands at 2,538, while last year it was 2,240. The year before that, it was 1778, and the year before that it was 1,650. So it would be fair to say there’s been a huge surge of interest.”

As for the average cost of setting up a hive with bees, he estimates it to be somewhere in the region of €500-€600, which includes a bee suit, a “smoker” and some other basic equipment. Time-wise, he reckons that a beekeeper needs to spend an average of half an hour a week per hive during the busy season (mid-May to mid-July), although very experienced bee-keepers would spend considerably less.

“You can get anything from 30-40 to 60-70lbs of honey from just one hive once the colony is well-established,” says Michael, who himself keeps something in the region of 18 hives.

He advises anyone interested in keeping bees to contact their local bee-keeping association (there are 53 around the country) for further information and advice on bee-keeping courses.

The Federation of Irish Beekeepers’ Associations (irishbeekeeping.ie) also holds its internationally renowned annual summer course in bee-keeping at Gormanstown College in Co Meath.

As for the OPW gardeners, they are settling in very happily to their new role as the walled garden’s beekeepers. “We’re delighted,” smiles Meeda.

And how, I wondered, does she rate Brian’s developing bee-keeping skills? “Not bad, not bad at all . . .”.