What's the buzz? Canberra's 'bee guy' has just written a book

“This is kind of cool,” Cormac Farrell posted on social media when the first author’s copy of his book, Urban Beekeeping – The City as a Hive, arrived in the mail.

It was the first time he’d held it in his hands.

“Wow,” he said, “this is seriously an amazing feeling,” as he ripped off the packaging and looked at the front page of his book. “This is the first time I’ve held a physical copy of my book.”

The first thing Cormac, an environmental scientist – and Canberra’s “bee guy” – did came as no surprise to people who know him. He thanked everyone else for helping to make it happen, from his publisher to the editor to the people who gave him photographs to illustrate the book to his partner Lisa.

Urban Beekeeping started life during the pandemic lockdown.

“It was just when COVID started. I was looking forward to playing lots of video games while my partner was running the country,” he laughed.

“But she told me no, I wasn’t, I was going to be constructive.”

And constructive he was. Using a lifetime’s knowledge and passion for bees, hives and making honey, he decided to start writing blogs and his great passion for growing hives in the city.

“I had written bits and pieces of things for a while,” said Cormac, who was working in the environmental sector at the time.

“The executives decided to go back to three days a week to help preserve income for junior staff.

“The plan was to help stay on, so when COVID was over, we’d have a full complement of staff.

“It was nice doing the three days, but it was also a business strategy. At the time, my partner was doing critical work, working 20 hours a day and told me I wasn’t allowed to sit around and play computer games.

“Her advice wasn’t optional.”

So Cormac started to write, not knowing how it would end up.

His passion, for as long as he can remember, has been to encourage people living in the cities to keep bees – pretty much wherever they want to – as long as they do their homework.

Yes, they’ll thrive in the right places out in the bush, in the garden – ordinary backyard or fancy diplomatic ones he’s discovered – and even at Parliament House, Canberra, where he has been Head Beekeeper, a voluntary role, since 2017.

The result is a great read.

Urban Beekeeping can read in one sitting to learn how to bring the natural landscape into our cities – or as a reference book to go back to when you can’t work out why you don’t have as much honey as last year.

Through it, Cormac takes his readers on the journey of creating a thriving urban hive – from what species are best to setting up the apiary, what flowers bees are partial to, what sort of hives suit different environments and managing hives.

With such a passion for his subject and time set aside to do it, Cormac said, “I became very disciplined”.

“I can do this,” he told himself. “I saw this podcast [British writer] Neil Gaiman did and thought, I have the space, I am free of interruptions, I can do this.

“Some days I did 50 words and stopped, other days I got thousands of words into the can. As long as I consistently made that plan to write, sometimes it was a grind, but other times, when it flowed, it was like pure joy.

“Turns out I loved the process of writing. Early on, it was just going to be for my blog then my partner said, ‘you have 20,000 words here, you can shape this into a book’.

“I had a couple of mates who are auhors and they helped me shape these loose ideas into a book – I was lucky to get such fantastic advice.”

But he reckons it was his passion for the subject that took him over the line.

“I didn’t write this book to make money – first time authors rarely do. I wrote it because I am passionate to get the environmental message out there.

“We need to act better locally so we can achieve better globally.”

Urban Beekeeping: The City as a Hive by Cormac Farrell will be launched at the Museum of Australian Democracy, Canberra, on Friday, 4 October, at 3 pm. Book your tickets here.