Ali from innocent, and Ciarán Cuff TD present Tracey Healy and Phelean McQuaid with their bee equipment
Back at the beginning of summer we launched Buy One Get One Bee, which meant that every delicious, limited edition Lemons, Honey and Ginger smoothie sold, helped us to help address the problem of Ireland’s disappearing bees.
Well, the campaign created quite a buzz (darn these irresistible bee puns), and last Monday, the Minister for State, Ciarán Cuffe, on innocent’s behalf, presented hives and other bee-quipment to 4 novices from the Federation of Irish Beekeeepers. They’ll be the ones taking care of the 200,000 bees we’re introducing back into the Irish countryside, so we reckoned that providing the latest in beekeeping fashion (netting is very ‘in’) was the least we could do.
Bee keeping novices, Phelean McQuaid, Tracey Healy and Tim Stevens with one of their new hives.
25% of Irish hives have been lost over the past 3 years, and fewer bees doesn’t just mean less gentle buzzing in the garden, or more expensive honey. These industrious creatures have uses both poetic (didn’t W. Bee. Yeats write about a “bee-loud glade”? Ah, Leaving Cert English...) and practical - they pollinate almost every fruit and vegetable grown here. And we’re big fans of fruit ‘n’ veg.Tracey Healy with a lemons honey and ginger innocent smoothie which was behind the buy one get one bee campaign.
So not only did we want to bring the bees back, we wanted them to have fun stuff to do when they got here. Hence the free packet of wildflower seeds with every bottle of Lemons, Honey and Ginger. Once planted, in gardens, yards or window boxes, the flowers provide the ideal habitat for bees.So big, big thanks for your support, especially to everyone who planted their seeds: you’ve helped make Ireland that bit more bee-autiful.
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