13 April 2022 When a lot of us think of biodiversity, we think of quiet forests or winding streams or a rainforest much further afield. We may not think of something that’s much harder to spot but that’s just as important: bees. And if an image of a bee hard Read more…
August 16th, 2018 On a warm afternoon in a Dublin city back garden overflowing with plants, shrubs, apple trees and vegetables, an exceptional variety of bees and butterflies are flying from one flower to another. We are in no ordinary garden, however. We are in the biodiversity sanctuary of the Read more…
August 14th, 2018 A new pollinator-friendly roundabout set up in Co Cork aims to support Ireland’s ailing bee population and raise awareness of their plight among the general public. The Poulavone Roundabout in Ballincollig was recently redesigned into an oasis for bees and other pollinators by Griffins Garden Centre, with Read more…
July 19th, 2018 Kilkenny is set to take the lead in adopting new measures to protect a declining population of Bumblebees and other pollinators. Kilkenny County Council has agreed to adopt the National Pollinator Plan together with the Kilkenny Plan of Action to support the development of pollinator-friendly locations around Read more…
July 11th, 2018 English broadcaster and naturalist Sir David Attenborough recently warned that the extinction of bees will be a disaster for humankind. “If bees were to disappear from the face of the earth, humans would have just four years left to live,” Sir Attenborough said. A 2016 study in Read more…
June 6th, 2018 The European Commission has proposed new measures in an attempt to halt a decline in wild pollinator populations across Europe. The Commission’s new proposals include improvements in monitoring and data collection and policies to address the social and economic aspects of the decreasing numbers of pollinators. According Read more…
The Irish Bumblebee population is at its lowest since monitoring began in 2012, new data from the National Biodiversity Data Centre (NBDC) reveals. The All-Ireland Bumblebee Monitoring Scheme data indicates marked losses between 2012 and 2017 of our eight most common Bumblebee species, with a year-on-year decline of 3.7 per Read more…
April 27th, 2018 EU governments passed a near-total ban earlier this morning of the use of neonicotinoid pesticides on outdoor crops due to their impact on pollinators. Member States endorsed the European Commission’s proposals to completely ban the outdoor uses of three active substances – clothianidin, imidacloprid, and thiamethoxam. Two Read more…
July 11th, 2017 A new study, part-funded by pesticide manufacturers Bayer and Syngenta, has found that pesticides pose a major risk to European honeybees and wild bees. The study is based on work by researchers from the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH) who carried out a large-scale experiment to assess the Read more…
March 3rd 2017 Protesters dressed as bees, foxes and even an Angry Bird, made their presence felt outside the Oireachtas this week as the controversial Heritage Bill came back up for debate. The Heritage Bill being put forward by Minister for Arts, Heritage, Regional, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs Heather Humphreys Read more…