Irish Times	Bees Command Royal Performance, Press cutting about GBBG from 1992

This article appeared in the Irish Times, Tuesday August 4th 1992. Titled... 'Bees Command Royal Performance'.

Written by Sean MacConnell, Agriculture Correspondent

Like an anxious father awaiting the return of his daughters from their "Trip to Tipp", a master beekeeper, Micheál Mac Giollacoda, was monitoring carefully the slopes of the Galtee mountains this weekend in the hope that the ladies in his life did not meet "undesirable drones" on their first outing.

Mr Mac Giollacoda, from Glengarra Wood, near Cahir, Co Tipperary, is the man who made history recently by exporting the first consignment of queen bees to Britain from his queen-rearing station on the side of the Galtees, and this weekend some of his royal charges were out mating for the first time.

Having extracted the queen eggs from the hives, Mr Mac Giollacoda, a retired forester and a leading member of the British Isles Beekeepers' Association, incubates and sends the young queens up to the mountains with 10 male companions to an isolated area where, for a kind of honeymoon period, he hopes they will mate with the best.

"I send them up there in the hope that they will not meet any strays, undesirable drones, who would damage the breeding strain. The only problem is that if you go up there to monitor what is going on, you might upset the whole lot," he said.

While in the mountains, the queen, who hatches in 16 days and begins flying a week later, goes out hunting for as many as 10 mates with which she will breed and hopefully produce the kind of strain he wants.

Seeking to breed a pure strain of Irish queen bee, Mr Mac Giollacoda is anxious that his queens make no contact with mating drones of Italian, Russian or Austrian extraction which were imported here after disease wiped out many hives between the wars.

"The native bee," he said, "is a docile insect with a low swarming characteristic and makes for a better worker in our kind of climate. The Irish bee is also stockier, blacker and broad of wing, unlike the highly coloured, yellow-striped Italian bee with narrow wing and lower work rate."

Apart from the physical characteristics which endear the black Irish bee to him, Ireland is perhaps the only place in Europe free from most diseases, especially the dreaded varroatosis disease which struck British swarms last year and has plagued other European and Australian hives.

"This is a mite which attacks the larvae and the bee itself and is hard to control. We are not allowed to import bees here any more, except under licence. They have even greater problems in Britain and that is why my queens are important," he said.

Mr Mac Giollacoda's first consignment of "royals" have already gone to a research centre in Hadlow, Kent, where they will be used for further breeding purposes involving instrumental insemination.

He hopes more will follow if the weekend Tipperary trip has been successful and they did not meet the wrong kind of company.

	Editor's Note... The original text was in columnar format and was not illustrated. The picture above is of the Galtee mountains. This picture is of Micheál the 'forester' himself, in his beloved Glengarra wood... Among the trees that he is so fond of. Photo... Jim Power

Originated... 24 June 2005,