BEES AND THE AUTHORITIES

Solinus, on the authority of Camden, incontrovertibly declares that there are no bees in Ireland. Keating impugns both Camden and Solinus stating Such is the quantity of bees, that they are found not only in hives, but even in the trunks of trees, and in holes in the ground.

Modomnoc the beekeeper, who was with St David in Wales, was followed to Ireland by an adoring swarm of bees.

Writing in the 8th century, Bede the so-called Venerable opines Hibernia … et salubritate ac serenitate aerum… Diues lactis ac mellis insula … Or, so Google tells us:

Ireland has a fine climate, and is a land rich in milk and honey.

In 1920 Benedictine Brother Adam hybridized the Buckfast Bee. According to The Economist in 1996 Brother Adam was unsurpassed as a breeder of bees. He talked to them, he stroked them. He brought to the hives a calmness that, according to who saw him work, the sensitive bees responded to.

The Buckfast Bee – Brother Adam’s supreme though far from only achievement as a breeder - is super-productive, extremely fecund, resistant to disease and disinclined to swarm. However, it cannot perform miracles.

Good St Bega could. She fled Ireland for Northumbria, away from enforced marriage to a Norwegian Prince. There she founded the still-extant Cumbrian coastal village of St Bees, pop 1,717, enrolled in the census of 2001.

Sometime after, although not too long after, 850AD, St Bega, to gain the land on which to build her prioryfrom goading Lord Egremont, made it snowthree inches deep on Midsummer’s Day. Yes, she made it snow three inches deep on Midsummer's Day, dispossessing Lord Egremont, as well as, presumably, seriously upsetting the bees as a consequence.