As beekeepers across Europe have reported massive losses of colonies, the Department of Agriculture has appealed to beekeepers here to contact them if they they are having similar losses.
The huge losses are a result of either colony collapse disorder (CCD), a disease that has already hit the US stocks very hard, or a new form of Varroa destructor, a mite that attacks bees.
In London, it was reported this week that about 4,000 hives, two-thirds of the bee colonies in the capital, are estimated to have died over the winter when the normal mortality rate is about 15 per cent.
Britain's department for environment, food and rural affairs said its special investigation unit has found that 30 per cent of hives inspected so far have been lost, twice the winter loss rate.
In the US, 50 per cent of the honeybee colonies have been wiped out by CCD and hundreds of thousands of colonies have collapsed in Spain. Beekeepers in Poland, Greece, Croatia, Switzerland, Italy and Portugal have also reported heavy losses.
A department spokesman in Dublin said it has been monitoring the reports of CCD that had been coming from the Continent and Britain. "We are unaware of any major losses of colonies here, but many beekeepers would not have opened up their hives yet after the winter," he said.
He said one of the major problems when CCD occurs is that no trace of the bees is left in a hive and this was a stumbling block for scientific research. "We want to know instantly if there have been losses here and I would ask beekeepers to report to us or to Teagasc if they think their colonies have been hit by CCD." Ireland is only recovering from its first ever outbreak of Varroa disease, which struck here in the late 1990s and did enormous damage to stocks.