‘If every garden owner does a little bit, grow sunflowers or make a pond, those little dots add up to a big area’

Pinned up on one of the walls in Paddy Gorman’s farm workshop near Kilmessan is his favourite saying. It’s a message, written in large, bold, black letters that takes up a sizeable chunk of the wall.

“No-one can do everything but everyone can do something,” goes the catchy line that is impossible to ignore. Underneath is the name of the author, American writer Max Lucado.

The words could relate to many aspects of life but Paddy Gorman points to the line in the context of saving the natural world - and by extension, the world.

Paddy Gorman is not of the view that our puny individual efforts would, in the grand scheme of things, be irrelevant in this great cause. He instead, is a disciple of the ‘power of one’ philosophy whereby if we all do our bit, that combined we can literally change the world and halt what the doomsayers tells is a relentless march to climatic Armageddon.

“Everyone can do their little bit. The other day I heard about how the hoover fly, which is a great pollinator, is struggling in England, but all the hoover fly need to raise her young is a little pond, because it is in ponds she lays her eggs but if you haven’t a pond get a bucket of water with some twigs and a bit of grass in it, that will do. It’s in the grass she lays her eggs. A bucket of water, some grass, twigs or a little pond in the garden, everybody can supply that.

“That’s why I say don’t be looking to the farmers, who are the guardians of the land, to make the changes, every household can do that. If you have a household every 30, 40 meters on a road, that’s all you want, they can be stepping stones for wild life. If every owner of every little garden does a little bit, grow sunflowers say, make a little pond, all those little dots will add up to a big area.”

Paddy is not just somebody who talks about saving nature he’s doing something about himself. He looks after close to 70 bee hives. Some of these hives are found on his land while others are located in other areas throughout Meath.

The average hive has, he will tell you, anywhere between 50,000 and 80,000 bees. That tots up to a huge amount of busy, buzzing creatures in his enterprise. They produce honey which he sells commercially under the Beewise label.

Bees, he reminds, as he sits in his workshop, play a key role in food production. We need them to survive, almost as much as we need oxygen and light.

SAVING THE BEE

Recently a conference of beekeepers was held in Athlone to discuss their concerns around the native Irish honey bee which, they claim, is in grave danger of extinction. According to the Native Irish Honey Bee Society the importation in recent years of thousands of foreign queens is triggering “a lot of hybridization problems” which can result in more aggressive bees. In all of this the Irish honey bee is, they emphasise, being edged out, 6,000 years of evolution under the cloud of a dark threat.

During a chat with Paddy his fascination with all things relating to bees is obvious. How their society functions. How to care for them. What’s also obvious is his own personal concern about the challenges and threat to his honey-loving friends. Sure, the Irish honey bee faces problems but so do other varieties such as the humble Irish Bumble bee.

“There are 6,000 beekeepers in Ireland so they are looking after the honey bees, you have your problems with your diseases and everything else, but at least the beekeepers are looking after them, there’s nobody looking after the Bumble bees, our solitary bees, and they are vitally important pollinators as well,” Paddy points out warming to the subject. “Our Bumble bee is wild and people don’t see them as of monetary value but they are doing an awful lot of pollinating.”

They face threats, he adds, from cold, unseasonal nights to people cutting hedges “to within an inch of their lives” or removing them altogether. Then there’s the capricious nature of the Irish weather. That’s particularly relevant when it comes to the all-powerful queen bee who can lay up to 2,000 eggs a day. “Because she comes out of the hibernation, she doesn’t have a nest yet and she can die of the cold, if there is a sudden cold snap,” he adds his concern obvious.

“Up to 33 per cent of our food has to be pollinated,” he adds to reinforce the point.

FORECASTING THE WEATHER

Back in 2019 the Meath Chronicle went out to talk to Paddy Gorman on his farm in Crerogue, a few miles outside Kilmessan. He was at the time just starting out on an enterprise that included nature walks. That has since fallen by the wayside. Now he prefers to concentrate on his honey-producing project.

That is one change in his life. What has not changed is his love of nature. The 30 acres that surrounds his house is given over to growing wild flowers and forestry – and, of course, his bees. It’s all part of an interlinking ecosystem. “You need everything, birds spread plants from one part of the country to the other – you can’t just concentrate on bees. Everything works together.”

Paddy Gorman grew up on that farm – the youngest in a family of 11 - and attributes his fascination with bees to his uncle Brian who managed hives back in the 1970s. “Brian would give us honey and we would pin our ears back and lap it up, it was lovely stuff.”

He worked for a time in the building trade but the daily commute to work wasn’t for him. The hustle and bustle of city life was never part of his agenda. “I deliver honey to Dublin every so often now but I still don’t know how people can commute up there every day of the week. It would drive me mad.”

Married with two teenage children, Paddy wanted to be his own boss, always. He will outline how his lifestyle might not be the most lucrative but he’s happy. He’s doing what he wants to do. He started beekeeping in 2010 originally as a hobby but his demand for his honey grew and grew.

Apart from a chance to live the good life, as he see it, there are other rewards to be derived from working with bees. “It’s very relaxing, they say if you have blood pressure and work with bees that blood pressure will go down quickly,” he adds.

Not, he will also quickly suggest, that while working with bees is all about relaxation and being in close contact with nature, you have to know what you are doing as well. Be alive to what can happen. “I had one very aggressive hive about three years ago and as soon as I got out of the van they went to get at me. They were like torpedoes, bouncing off the suit. What you have to do in that situation is kill the queen and replace her with more docile queen and put her into the hive. The rest of the bees will calm down in about three weeks.”

To be a successful beekeeper, Paddy suggests, requires specific qualities including a lot of patience, a love of nature and the ‘right’ temperament. “Certain people can’t be beekeepers because there’s just the fear. When you open a hive 30,000 bees flying at you some people’s blood pressure might not be low after an episode like that. You just have to learn to be gentle with them and once you get used to doing that it’s all very relaxing.

“You could look into a hive for hours. Now, I have so many hives that I haven’t time to look into them for that amount of time, but I like to watch them and see them working. It’s amazing to see them running around the hive, doing their little jobs.”

Bees, adds Paddy, have all sorts of characteristics and talents ranging from their renowned willingness to work ferociously hard to an ability to tell the weather.

“They will be a bit more aggressive than usual sometimes, especially in the constantly changing Irish weather we have. If there is a thundery shower off in the distance, they will know that a lot quicker than we will. I got caught one day, they suddenly got very narky with me. I was wondering what was wrong because they had been very quiet. When I looked over my shoulder there was a big black cloud approaching. So I closed the hive up and within five minutes it was lashing rain. They knew it was coming and were telling me: ‘Close up the hive, quickly, we don’t want to get wet.’”

Paddy Gorman laughs and shakes his head at the good of it all. You just can’t beat the natural world, he adds. The same world, he believes, we all can do our bit to save.

Like Max Lucado said, everyone can do something.

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'They are working solely for the hive, the next generation, the queen is their priority'