Keeping Bees In Iceland - Really?



On the 1st of October Rugby Beekeepers were given a presentation by Sæunn Sigvaldadóttir, Sæunn is a beekeeper in Iceland where honey bees aren't really supposed to live. For a part of the year there is 24 hours of daylight, for another part it is almost total darkness, the average temperature is around 4-5 degrees C with lows sometimes reaching -20 and highs hitting the low twenties.

Sæunn ran through the trials and tribulations of trying to keep bees in this environment; obtaining bees was very restricted with imports only allowed from one certified disease free island, Aland. To make things even more difficult, there were no bee equipment supply companies on Iceland, so hives and foundation had to be hand made.

What appeared to be one of the most serious problems was the lack of genetic diversity. Sæunn told us that she thought this was a serious problem, with fairly unproductive queens, quite possibly caused by the genetics of drones. She explained that she had tried to get the Icelandic government to allow imports of bees from the Isle of Mann, but this has yet to be approved. Not wishing to be deterred, she had contacted Dr. Susan Cobey, an expert on bee artificial insemination in the US. After attending a course on how to carry out this process Sæunn has taken this knowledge back to Iceland and hopes to use semen from drones obtained from other locations to increase the genetic diversity of the bee population in Iceland.

All in all, this was a very inspiring talk, especially when we found out that she had only been a beekeeper for around two years. Also, as there were no beginners courses in Iceland, she had attended a course run by the Warwick and Leamington branch!