THE WRITER Jean Giono could have had a short enough career in newspapers - or so one would hope - if he had decided to take that route as a wordsmith, writes Lorna Siggins.
He was no New York Timescelebrity, no serial deceptionist like Jayson Blair. However, Giono was author of an elaborate fabrication, undertaken for all the right reasons and not for sake of an enduring byline.
Giono, you may recall, was asked by the Reader's Digestto write about the most extraordinary person he had ever known. At this stage, in the early 1950s, the highly respected French novelist had nothing to prove in terms of his literary worth.
And so the magazine loved his account of a hitherto unknown Provençal shepherd, one Elzeard Bouffier, who had revived a degraded landscape through his singular, solitary planting of thousands of trees. Bouffier was everyman's hero, achieving status only after his death in a quiet French hospice. The late "Y" noted in this newspaper that Giono's utterly convincing account may have stimulated many a forestry project - so did it really matter that his subject didn't actually exist?
We were reminded of this recently while protecting a young mountain ash from the might of some Atlantic gales. It could have been one of Bouffier's best-kept secrets - the immense satisfaction you can derive from mud under the fingernails as you plant and nurse a fragile young sapling. Uncannily, as the winds eased and we tended to the roots, we heard a rare enough sound: that of a visiting honeybee.
Bees and their pollinating activities played an integral part in Bouffier's cultivation plan. However, according to Prof Breandán Ó Cochlainn, recently retired chemistry lecturer at NUI Galway, it wasn't a wild bee that we heard.
Unfortunately, W.B. Yeats's "bee-loud glade" is becoming a rarity in our 21st-century Irish landscape, thanks to a combination of factors, including disease, he says. Colony collapse disorder, linked to Israeli acute paralysis virus, has attracted most international publicity since it was reported in the US last year. As yet, there has been no report of the same here, but there is a far more insidious threat - varroa destructor, or the tiny varroa mite.
Ó Cochlainn, education officer with the Federation of Irish Beekeepers' Associations and secretary of the Galway branch, contends that this mite has caused most damage since it was first identified here in Sligo just 10 years ago. It has virtually wiped out the wild honeybee in Ireland, he says, though there is still the odd colony - mainly on the west coast, including a little sanctuary around Cleggan in Connemara.
"Bee parasitic mite syndrome" is how Teagasc, the agriculture and food development authority, describes the disease complex associated with the parasite. This dracula feeds on the haemolymph of the bee, and has a preference for drone broods. It then attaches itself to emerging and very weakened adult bees whose lifespan can be reduced by 50 per cent.
Early detection, quick treatment and good bee-keeping practice can help to manage the pest, according to Teagasc, and there are appropriagte pesticides. However, some mites are developing resistance, and Ó Cochlainn says that seasonal shifts associated with climate change may be complicating the situation.
Our rising temperatures and dwindling number of frost days, along with earlier flowering of plants, are all having an effect. Normally, during cold winter days, bees will form a cluster in a hive to transfer heat and conserve energy, he says. The temperature shift means that bees aren't forming those clusters any more, and are using stores which would normally be saved up between October and February.
Bees are also flying in winter, and visiting hives which may already be afflicted with fungus or mites or other conditions. This "robbing", as it is known, can spread disease. Forage is vanishing, as fields become larger due to intensive agriculture and hedgerows are cut for roads or one-off house construction.
"Bees, which have been with us since the Ice Age, are far more adaptable than we are," Ó Cochlainn says." They've been to the forefront of history - it was a honeybee that was viewed through Galileo's first microscope, and honey has been both an integral part of our language and essential for life. But you can forgive bee colonies now for being very, very confused."
Still, he and colleagues continue with a type of husbandry which cannot guarantee a full-time income anymore. He regularly seeks "lodgings" for his own hives, and says that some of the most enthusiastic landlords are enlightened farmers who recognise the benefits of the insects' presence for crop cultivation. Among his hive collection is one dating from the time of the Congested Districts Board.
It reflects the sort of commitment in the face of adversity - the spirit of Elzeard Bouffier, were he to have lived. And there's still a question mark over that life, in spite of Giono's much publicised "exposure". Richard Medrington and Rick Conte of the British Puppet State Theatre Company have adapted Giono's work for stage, and performed it at a children's festival late last year in Galway.
They noted how they had met a head teacher on the Scottish Isle of Mull, who used to work as a forester in France. He told them that there were areas of Provence which should be scrubland, according to the maps. Mysteriously, they were covered. . .by woods.