'You have to be calm' around bees

When Paul Leighton took up beekeeping as an interest in 2018, he couldn't have expected that it would take over a major chunk of his spare time, writes Brian Byrne. But now, as The Kildare Bee Man, it is both a passion and a way of leaving aside the stresses of modern life.

Paul began with just one beehive in his garden in Kilcullen. Today with multiple hives, located in a rural area outside Kilcullen, he oversees the activities of at least half a million buzzing busy helpers. When it comes to the annual collection of their excess honey, it makes for a very busy Leighton family household as they filter and jar the sweet golden harvest.

Sales of the honey probably don't reflect a profit when the calculation of the work through the year is added up, but Paul sets a different value on what beekeeping offers. "It completely relaxes me," he says. "I go busy busy at work, then I put my bee suit on and go checking the queen in each the hives. You have to be calm around them, calm about what you're doing. To be honest, it's real chill out time."

Six years on from his first introduction to beekeeping, Paul has built up a substantial level of knowledge which he's very happy to share with anyone interested. As a longtime member of Kilcullen Community Action he was a prime mover for the KCA beehive project. He also gives talks in schools, passing on his equal passions for the environment and biodiversity. "When I first ask the children why do we need pollination, they may mention things like apples and oranges. But then I show them a bar of Cadbury's chocolate, and tell them that if we don't have pollinators, we don't have this. Instantly it clicks, and they sit up and take notice." He also explains that it was only after the Crusades that sugar cane was introduced to Europe. "Before that there was only honey. And in our house today, the only sweetener used is honey."

Beekeepers are a very diverse community, with different ways of doing things and reasons for being in the honey business. For Paul, the quality of his bees' honey, and their own welfare, are paramount. "First, our hives are located in an area that is largely organic farming, so there are no sprays and chemicals to affect the nectar. We also don't feed our bees with sugar to keep them going through the winter — we make sure that enough honey is left in the hives for their needs. I don't see any sense in filling the hives with baker's fondant just so we could take all the honey."

As the season progresses, nectar from different sources gives very distinct honey tastes and colours. The frames in a hive that hold the boxes where the honey is stored, called 'supers', are added through the season as they fill, and each can provide a uniquely individual honey result. "I even know by looking at the jar which hive it came from." 

The supers are collected at the end of the summer, with Paul and his wife Majella and their two sons all working together to extract, filter, and fill the jars that they later sell. "Our kitchen is a bit like a small factory when we're doing this. But there's a great satisfaction in being able to provide such a good product, and we have a real pride in the honey that we sell." Unlike commercially produced honey, which is heavily processed, Paul's is 'raw' honey with minimal interference beyond a single filtering and fully sterilised filling of the jars.

Paul's colonies are Native Irish Bees. Individual queens can have different work rates, and Paul estimates that in 2022 90pc of their honey came from the hives to two related queens. "They were workaholics, went strong through the winter and in the spring laid eggs at a great rate, producing loads of worker bees."

His interest in beekeeping was initially piqued when he and Majella were at the Bloom Festival in Dublin's Phoenix Park and saw different kinds of honey on sale. "It took some years before I got that first hive, which then became four, and more." And it's likely that those who have known Paul through the years will vouch for the fact that, apart from honey being a healthy food in the first place, he himself shows the health benefits of being absorbed in such a nature-based past-time. 

Supplies of the 2023 batch are now available. Contact The Kildare Bee Man in Kilcullen, R56 C439.

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