Grace McCormack Protecting honey bees on the island of Ireland

Our journey from discovery to legislation/
When Prof McCormack first started working on honey bee research in Ireland little was
known about the genetic composition of the Irish honey bee population. It was assumed
that no honey bees were able to survive in the wild and while members of the Native Irish
Honey Bee Society (NIHBS) were confident that they were breeding the native dark bee
others were more sceptical. The main objective of NIHBS is to protect Ireland’s only
native honey bee. In collaboration with other scientists, beekeepers and members of the
public Prof McCormack’s group set out to explore some of these assumptions. More
recently NIHBS also joined up with the Climate Bar Association and a Green party TD and
together we got enough support to present a Bill to Dail Eireann to ban imports.
Grace McCormack is a Professor in Zoology at NUI Galway. Her interests lie in evolutionary biology and particularly in using molecular data to understand how organisms are related to each other and the impacts this may have on conservation and on the evolution of organismal traits. The interaction between animals and their parasites/pathogens over evolutionary time is also of interest as is the use of this information in applied science such as biodiscovery (marine sponges) and apiculture (bees). Grace started beekeeping to better understand the species she is now studying, and the University apiary managed by her has 12-15 colonies.

[@davecavana1031]

Love graces talks they give me such hope.

[@lenturtle7954]

Does your association educate the beekeepers on how to do sustainable beekeeping using your black bees . It would reduce importing greatly .
We are doing more of it in Canada because its less expensive , spreads less disease etc and promotes the girls that survive our winters etc .
Len Turtle Sask Canada

[@lenturtle7954]

Exporting to North America where there not native honey bees ?
I think the biggest concern for us is parasites and disease .
Who knows about surviveability unless you try ?
My bees seem to be 6 or 7 different species or hybreds and there we seem to see none of a big fuzzy gentle yellow one we used to get in the 80s .

[@tomahawkmissile241]

so Charles Darwin was on to something when evolution takes hold like the ground beneath there little feet it hold on to every advantage needed for the survival of these buggers. We hope a rainbow developes after finding the partical of genes into a wave of the HoneyBearer - un latin and unleashes a Rainbow after the sample is tested about 42 locations.