This blog documents the story of the Bee Limerick Group and their quest to introduce honey bees back into the city centre of Limerick. Bee Limerick along with its partners are also involved in planting native Irish flowers, shrubs and trees to create a resilient urban ecology.

Urban Bee Gardens for Limerick City

Urban Bee Gardens for Limerick City

Many people are afraid of bees, often because they mistake them for the much more aggressive wasps, but the truth is bees have no interest in humans and are only interested in nectar and pollen from your flowers. The native Irish bee Apis Mellifera Mellifera is known to be docile and will go about its daily business oblivious to human activity.

It is very fashionable to have an urban bee garden now. Chelsea Flower Show featured a bee garden in May as did Hampton Court Palace Flower Show in July. Here at home, garden designers and one artist – Marion Keogh, Una Thomas, Bernie Torpey and Róisín de Buitléar – presented their pretty and floriferous Beauty and the Bees garden at Bloom. Bee gardens may be fashionable but bees survival is essential. Some plants are self-pollinating, and others use the services of the wind, however, many plants rely upon insects, especially bees, which are responsible for pollination of 1/3 of all plants.

Irish dark bee Apis Mellifera Mellifera

Bees have a foraging distance of approximately 5 km radius from their hive. A bee hive will contain up to 50,000 bees at the height of production and a bee will visit up to 5,000 flowers a day. So, bee hives placed in the city centre will contribute significantly to pollination of plants in Limerick’s urban gardens. As bees are known as the great pollinators this will be good news for gardeners and the pollination of their flowers, fruiting plants and vegetables.

                                          Bumble bee from below

As bees will help city gardens bloom, in turn city gardeners can support bees: each plot can offer important micro bee habitats. Now imagine 100’s of bee friendly urban gardens with different types of plants in bloom throughout most months of the year. This will form a huge network of interconnected micro bee habitats to make up one large bee sanctuary and honey trail for many bee species. In this way, urban gardeners can work together collectively; create bee friendly gardens, and prevent the native Irish bee from becoming extinct. On a local government level also the city council can plant plants, shrubs, herbs and trees that support urban ecology and the survival of bees.  


The following images are of urban gardens in the georgian quarter of Limerick City