It’s time to Bee careful
TERMONFECKIN MAN AND WORLD PRESIDENT PHILIP MCCABE HAS JUST RETURNED FROM THE 45TH INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS ON BEEKEEPING HELD IN TURKEY. HUBERT MURPHY MET HIM.
LEO Varadkar, Enda Kenny, Gerry Adams, Michael D Higgins, Bono, Liam Neeson, Martin O’Neill, Ireland’s world famous list could go on and on. But when it comes to someone that world leaders really want to engage with and explore new ideas about the very future of the planet - they ring a chap at Beaulieu Cross on the Termonfeckin Road and ask him to fly half way around the planet for a chat!
Philip McCabe can hardly believe the company he keeps. Be it world leaders, ministers, kings and princes, he has become accustomed to rubbing shoulders with them all.
Philip is entering his second year as President of Apimondia - basically the world organisation of beekeepers.
He readily admits that Ireland is way behind when it comes to realising how important bees are to the planet - and it’s not just bees that are endangered - it’s all insects.
He tells of a meeting with Prince Albert of Monaco some time ago. The prince wanted a quick few lines to sum up how endangered insects are in general in the present world.
‘I told him, years ago when I used to drive from Dublin to Galway, I’d arrive there and the first thing I’d have to do was to clean my windscreen and the front of the car because it would be covered with dead insects. Do that journey now and that does not happen. It’s simple,’ he stated.
And when you stop and think about it - he’s spot on.
‘Sometimes I think Malachy McCloskey (Boyne Honey) is the only person that knows me in this country,’ he states.
All over the planet, bees are huge business. In the Arab countries, they pay $150 a kilo for raw honey to feed race horses. In the US, business values hit €115bn. European countries are doing all in their power to learn more.
‘ They are all at a level we can’t imagine,’ Philip states. He has spent time in Russia, Denmark, Serbia and Slovenia this year and Finland is next. They wanted him in China last weekend and he couldn’t make the trip.
Beekeepers get paid for pollination in some places. It means more bees, more honey, more insects, more birds - saving the planet.
‘We had Prince Albert over in the summer to Drogheda and the local schoolchildren did a project on biodiversity but most ended up doing projects on fish, because they couldn’t source enough insects around here.’
He has just returned from the 45th international Apimondia congress in Instanbul in Turkey. Over there they know their business and in 2016 exported 10,000 tonnes of honey.
Philip brought a couple of locals with him for the congress and their - and that’s jaws dropped when they saw the place. 13,000 people attended from 129 countries around the world. ‘It was massive,’ he explained, adding that ministers were coming up and asking him how Enda Kenny was keeping! They even got to see original Whirling Dervishes.
Various speakers addressed many issues, but huge emphasis was put on the fact that honey is the original ‘energy’ drink - long before the present day brands.
While Philip heads up the organisation, the team behind him spread the planet, from Japan to the US, Australia to all parts of Africa.
The group was formed in 1897 and the basic aim is to promote scientific, ecological, social and economic beekeeping development around the world and more and more conservation is a huge topic.
The name Apimondia is a compound word made from api, referring to honey bees, and mondia, meaning the world.
Philip still has two years to run on his four year term as president and in that time will do all he can to continue to promote the survival of the bee population.