Whats the Gene Pool:
It is essential for beekeeping in Ireland into the future, to measure the diversity that we still have, by surveying the spread of alleles that occur in local populations. This would provide the information by which, through optimizing diversity, the health of our bees could be maximized.
Cork Institute of Technology have stepped up to the plate and agreed to set up a research project to run in the newly built CREATE building to sample the Irish stocks , identify the different sex alleles , so that in the future Irish beekeepers can select for sex alleles to improve the genetic viability of their honeybee stocks.
The aim is to eventually have a nationwide data base covering all of Ireland so that if a beekeeper needs to introduce new genetics into their stocks then they can select from the database to improve the overall bee-health in their bees. The project covers the Ireland of Ireland and it is hoped to sample bees from all 32 counties, to see what genetic resources are available. This would help the beekeepers who swop queens to use science to select different sex alleles in the hope that the queens would meet up with drones with different sex alleles to improve the overall genetic viability and the overall bee health of the Irish stocks.
How to help:
So if you are interested in the future of bees on this island and have some cash available please consider donating to the Bee Research Project being run by CIT in co-operation with FIBKA. For this purpose CIT is a Charity and any individual contributions in excess of €250 can be enhanced by a Tax Refund to the Project.
For Further details see the FIBKA Webpage.
or contact the FIBKA bee-health officer Eleanor Attridge by sending an email to beehealth@irishbeekeeping.ie
or go direct to the donation site ifundraise webpage
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