Sir, – Leaving aside for a moment the squalid squabbling of the politicians, the greasy fumbling of the bankers and the excited chattering of the Leaving Cert classes, let us consider something really important.
It’s high June: the hedgerows are white with whitethorn blossom, the verges are cream with clover, the sycamore drips with nectar – yet no honeybee is seen or heard in the land; at least I, preoccupied such things, have yet to meet one.
An occasional, lone bumblebee haunts the red clover, and a very few hoverflies hover, but the lovely apis mellifera on her heroic, epic mission of not only stocking our shelves with the golden ambrosia but also making fruitful our orchards and vegetable farms – she is marked disastrously absent.
The decline, indeed decimation, of the honeybee and her close cousins is well documented among scientists and apiarists yet rarely makes front-page headlines much less the six o’clock news.
To encounter no honeybees in April could be deemed unfortunate, to observe none in May probably careless – but to search in vain by meadow, grove and garden through the warm, scented days of midsummer is truly nightmarish. Apocalyptic is not too strong a word. – Yours, etc,
RICHARD GALLAGHER ,
Coolagh,
Callan,
Co Kilkenny.