The intrepid sailor, long-time journalist and publisher Arthur Reynolds, a man with an all-round curiosity about the world and the creatures that inhabit it, follows up a recent mention of honey in this corner. Arthur recalls Peter Wheeler, married to Sheila, daughter of the admirable Robert Lynd, who had a house in Tullycross, Co Galway, for about 15 years from 1955 or so. He was an expert beekeeper with a regular column in a bee-keeping journal. He made a study of bees in Connemara and found them to be very unproductive. He had once said to Arthur that he had produced half-a-ton of honey over the years in the garden of a beautiful house in Keats Grove, Hampstead from pollen collected in north London gardens and from Hampstead Heath.
After consultation with other experts, he decided that he would breed a bee to suit West of Ireland conditions, taking into account, of course, the floral structure of the area. The result with his larger bee was satisfactory in terms of honey production. But there was a snag. His bee was fiercer than all others and stung all and sundry with little provocation. Peter worked out a theory or an explanation for this: he told Arthur that the bees were angry bees because they had to fly laden with pollen against the prevailing west winds back to the hives, and this exhausted them. Tired bees, it seems, are cross bees - not unlike humans. He gave classes voluntarily in local schools and to Co Galway societies, urging the members to become apiarists. Are there many of them in the area today. Heather honey is the best honey in the world - Irish heather honey. We've enough heather anyway.
But Arthur has a friend who has kept bees in his garden at Dartmouth Road, Dublin for over 30 years and does well in the good years. And he says that bees get most of their pollen from trees, and not from flowers. Probably hawthorn, lime, sycamore, chestnut included, though all fruiting trees, like apple and pear, would yield a lot. In the foothills of the Pyrenees this year, Irish visitors were overcome with the carpets of little flowers over which they were tramping.
It is no wonder that the honey business run by the Marsenach family can produce so many delightful varieties. Being elsewhere, didn't get to the Dublin beekeepers' show last Saturday. Sean Cronin will have the news. Y