Irish scientists leading international wild honey bee research
An international research project led by Irish scientists has been launched to investigate the wild honey bee.
The wild honey bee was once thought to be extinct, however recent research has found they are still surviving and thriving in some parts of Europe, including in Ireland.
FREE-B, a new research project between Ireland, France, Poland, Portugal and Sweden has been established to explore the free-living honey bees and find out how they have formed stable populations in the wild.
Professor Grace McCormack, head of the School of Natural Sciences at University of Galway and project coordinator of the FREE-B research project, said that Ireland has been studying the wild honey bee since 2015 and is therefore well ahead of other countries in understanding the bee.
So far, more than 700 wild honey bee colonies have been identified on the island of Ireland.
Speaking on RTÉ's Morning Ireland, Prof McCormack said the colonies they have found have excellent overwintering survival.
FREE-B is seeking to understand how the bee was able to survive while a parasitic varroa mite is decimating farmed honey bee populations.
The varroa mite was introduced to Europe via imported bees for farming purposes.
Prof McCormack said scientists do not yet know why the native Irish wild honey bee is able to live with the mite.
"There is a high proportion of pure native Irish honey bee in the wild population and our research so far suggests that they do not have any higher levels of pests or diseases than managed colonies," she said.
These bees, Prof McCormack said "may hold key secrets" that Irish beekeepers could use to improve their beekeeping.
There are very few intensive bee farmers in Ireland. Most are small-scale or hobbyists.
PhD student Mick Verspuij began to get interested in bees in 2013, when, as an organic farmer, he was looking to increase his yields as more than 70% of his crops required pollination by bees.
Over a decade later, he manages nearly 300 free-living colonies in and around Buncrana in Donegal.
This means that the bee hives are in natural cavities such as holes in trees, called log hives, rather than in boxes designed to farm bees.
"This particular species, the native Irish honey bee species, it's been identified as absolutely unique to the rest of Europe," Mr Verspuij said.
"It's a locally adapted species like and obviously for that reason we should actually protect our heritage.
"We should actually do our best to protect species and its habitat."
As well as teams from the five European countries, other teams will search for the bee colonies with the help of citizen scientists and, in Ireland's case, rangers with the National Parks and Wildlife Service.
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