When you’re buzzing around town on the bus, please spare a thought for the busy bees hard at work back at the depot… literally.
Two Dublin Bus staff – mechanic Paul Granger and driver Irwin Bannon – have set up bee hives in two depots which are now home to some 250,000 bees.
And as well as helping conserve the native Irish black bee, a species that is in increasing need of support, they are producing close to 1,000 jars of the sweet stuff in a good year.
The honey is harvested and fed back to the bees to ensure they survive over winter and any remaining is raffled off to staff in the depot eager to try the sweet taste.
Paul is a beekeeper back at his home in Offaly and a few years ago went to management to suggest installing a few hives on some unused ground at the Phibsborough depot. Bosses thought it was a great idea, so he cleared a patch and installed two hives.
The successful project has now grown to a second depot nearby in Broadstone, and there are now five hives at the two depots.
The bees forage far and wide, buzzing up the Botanic Gardens in Glasnevin and the Phoenix Park and all over north Dublin in the hunt for food.
A Dublin bus. Rollingnews.ie
Irwin said: ‘Our bees here would be O’Connell Street, all the local hanging baskets, flowers outside pubs, Phoenix Park, Botanic Gardens. Anywhere within three or four kilometres, where they can find a sustainable amount of forage, i.e. pollen and nectar.’
Back at the hive in complete darkness, the bees do a ‘waggle dance’, which tells the other bees where they have found food, how much, and where it is located in relation to the sun.
Irwin helps with the hives’ weekly inspections – but admits it is not a risk-free venture, adding: ‘I do get stung but it’s the nature of the beast.
'Maybe 150 times throughout the year, but bees don’t have any interest in stinging anybody.
They’re just happy to go about their own business, but if you aggravate them by waving your hands, all of a sudden, you’re in trouble.’
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To mark World Bee Day on Tuesday this week, Dublin Bus invited photographer Tom Honan into the Phibsborough depot to see the bees in action.
Dublin Bus spokesman Blake Boland said: ‘This is a fantastic initiative being driven on a volunteer basis by our employees like Paul and Irwin.’
Dublin Bus is keen to expand the hives to more depots to promote sustainability. The company also harvests rainwater from rooftops and has rolled out more than 100 electric buses.
* This article was originally published on Extra.ie.
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