As people celebrated World Bee Day on May 20, I have to wonder what bees mean to me and my community and while I live in Spain, far from the hills of Fernhill and Cornamagh, it was an interesting conversation with a fellow Athlone native in my adopted homeland that led me to the meaning of Cornamagh.
My friend admitted that he destroyed a bee hive in Cornamagh when he was young and wondered what ecological damage he might have caused to the hill of bees, and he went on to explain the Irish for Cornamagh as being Corr na mBeach which can be translated as nook of the bees or hill of the bees.
However you translate it, I know Cornamagh isn’t all it could bee. Bees are vital to the survival of our ecosystems and that is why the UN designated May 20 as World Bee Day.
Over the years, I had seen the decrease in trees from the orchard down the field and cutting down of one of my grandparents great apple trees but never thought about the significance of the humble little bee in my neighbourhood.
If I lived in Cornamagh today, I’d like to start an apiary and encourage those busy little bees back to Corr na mBeach but last summer while visiting home, I found myself trying to tidy up my grandparents’ yard with chemicals.
I sprayed and I sprayed and I’m sure I killed some of those nasty nettles but did I think of those poor bees when I rounded up the chemicals and started to spay?
The truth is I didn’t, and I think in the future, people will give those bees more blades of grass and weeds to land on and will stop cutting their lush lawns bare during the spring and summer seasons, but maybe we won’t and a future generation will be left asking, what happened to all the bees in Westmeath?
Those answers won’t be found over tapas in Spain, but a little closer to home and I think more people will have to stop saying, not in my back yard, when it comes to housing hives that are important for crops and nature and ecology.
Bee kind, we can’t rewind.
