Beekeeping is first recorded in Ireland in the seventh century. It has seen a surge in popularity in modern times, with the membership of beekeeping associations exceeding 4,500. The median average number of hives per beekeeper is three hives, while the average honey output per hive is 11.4 kg (25 lb). The growth in the practice has occurred despite increased pressures on bees and beekeepers due to habitat loss, parasites and diseases, which has contributed to deaths approaching half of all honeybees in Ireland.

Some beekeepers have suggested that honey bees could have flown across a post-glacial land bridge between Great Britain and Ireland. However the current academic consensus since 1983 is that this could not have occurred, because there was no land bridge between the two islands, based on evidence including computer models and marine geological research.

Further, there is no evidence of beeswax in Neolithic pottery vessels in Ireland, although such evidence is widespread across Europe as close as the lower reaches of the Thames. Neolithic cire perdue bronze castings from this period are very few in Ireland.^{[page needed]}.

Also in the 3rd century AD, Solinus mentioned that Ireland (Hibernia) had no bees.

The earliest reference to bees in Ireland is in the Bechbretha (Old Irish for "Bee-judgements") of the Brehon Laws, composed after 637 AD. Among other issues, these dealt with the ownership and value of swarms, the compensation paid by the beekeeper to a person stung by one of his bees and the compensation paid to the beekeeper if a person's hens began eating his bees. The Bechbretha's bee judgements are unique in treating bee swarms as capable of trespass. This is related to their treatment of other livestock, but no other legal system applies the concept to bees, and it may be taken as evidence that the authors of the Bechbretha were trying to fit the new facts about bees into their longstanding legal ideas about livestock in general.

The Bechbretha gives Old Irish words, mil for honey and mid for mead; later versions from the ninth and tenth centuries contain the Old Irish word tarbsaithe meaning "cast swarm", an act performed only by honey bees. These are cognate with Indo-European forms across Europe and beyond, and they are very close to the same words in early Welsh. The Old Irish language includes the Latin loanword for beeswax céir, from the Latin ceris (only small amounts of wax can be obtained from the nests of bumble bees), suggesting the presence of honeybees near to the arrival of Christianity in 430 AD, and then for the word beehive lestar which may also be derived from a Welsh word, suggesting beekeeping was probably not established until the 5th or 6th centuries. This time frame matches with the legend of St. Modomnoc, whom it is claimed first brought bees to Ireland from Wales in the early 540s, just as the extreme weather events of 535–536 were subsiding. After the 7th century, Irish bronze founders became masters of the cire perdue technique.

A "great mortality of bees" was recorded in 950 AD, and again in 992 AD when it was said that "bees were largely kept in Ireland at this time, and were a great source of wealth to the people". In 1443 AD "the third epizooty (disease outbreak) of bees" was recorded.

The first beekeeping book in Ireland was written in 1733, Instructions for Managing Bees. It included recommendations for the use of skeps and stipulated the best size to use to encourage at least one swarm per year with two afterswarms. The bees would traditionally have been killed at the end of each season to be able to extract the honey and wax. By the mid-1700s, beekeepers started using boxes for keeping bees, and using different methods to extract the honey and wax without killing the bees.