A look at the importance of gorse, and our gorse avenue in Cloudforest One

In November, we were joined on our Community Planting Day by the wonderful NIHBS Native Irish Honeybee Society beekeepers Aideen Day and Hergen Bayer who manage hives on our Cloudforest sites.

In Cloudforests, we look to create and preserve different types of habitats on our sites, to accommodate the needs of all of the species - and we keep our honeybee hive numbers low, to prevent competition between the wild bees and the honeybees.

We’ve found a new beekeeper, Hergen, who builds his own hives based on Layens hives, and over the last few months he has gradually reinstated the native Irish Honey Bee population in our Cloudforest One forest, a designated NIHBS conservation area.

In June 2022 we were excited to see our first Irish Honey Bee hives moving into Cloudforest One Lahinch, and while it wasn’t the reason we installed the hives, we were delighted to get our first jars of honey in December. What we didn’t know then, was that unfortunately, our hive had gone queenless.

Bees are some of the smallest, yet most powerful creatures on the planet. We owe a great debt to these incredible insects for their vital role in providing the world with food and other resources. Bees act as the primary pollinators of flowers, trees, and other plants, meaning that without them, many of the fruits, vegetables, and other food sources we rely on would not exis