Bee Keeping Presentation during A Taste of West Cork Food Festival

This week during the Food Festival some exciting and innovative local foodie adventures are coming to the fore….one of them involves a home schooled boy from Leap who also happens to be a certified Bee Keeper.

Trevor Danann, age 13 has been a bee keeper since 9 years of age, having studied his first level in Gormanstown along with his father Max Danann. Together over these past few years they have researched and built several bee-hives finally settling on their own style of Top Bar Hive.

Trevor is taking part in the Growing Awareness Workshops for Children and Adults in the Old Fields Bakery, which is a special event during the Taste of West Cork Food Festival with an emphasis on where food comes from.

For this workshop, Trevor has put together a short presentation geared mainly to school children but certainly informative and interesting for just about everyone, on bees, honey and beekeeping – with an emphasis on several key points;

Irish Honey Bees – Ireland has one native species of honey producing bee, which are known to be gentle and easy to handle as well as being very nearly black in colour.

Honey - is perhaps the only food we humans eat that is produced from an insect and has been in our food chain for many thousands of years. It is known for it’s medicinal properties and use as a sweetener.

Pollination – it was Einstein who said it best….without bees to pollinate our foods, we would have 4 years at best – and then be left eating mainly bread and pork with very little vegetables or fruit.

Bees versus wasps – bees often get the blame for buzzing around our heads aggressively at this time of the year, however when you look closely these may just be wasps. Bees are usually darker, smaller and quite docile in comparison.

Overall, it is well worth a visit to the Old Fields Bakery to take in this informative and unique approach to food, honey and beekeeping as seen through the eyes of this young beekeeper – and to take in the many other stalls throughout the hall at the same time.