My love of honeybees has me always on the lookout for good books on the subject and imagine my surprise when I found Eimear Chaomhanach’s book, The Keeper of the Bees: Bees and Beekeeping in Irish Folklore. Eimear is the daughter of a beekeeper and an ardent lover of Irish folklore to where she has made an academic study of it. Her book is the culmination of her dedicated research on the subject and it will be cherished by all who love the bees.
We had just one hour for our interview and I’ll be recording a second hour with Eimear in the next couple of weeks for my paid subscribers. In this first hour Eimear describes a childhood spent helping her father tend the hives, then speaks to getting stung regularly as a child. She shares how she came to fall in love with Irish folklore, then explores the divinity of the bees, how they came to Ireland, the Brehon laws on bees, the tradition of “Telling the Bees,” and much more. This episode is for all my bee-lovers and folklore enthusiasts!
Eimear’s website:
https://beefolklore.ie/
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