Keeping hives alive is busy work
Commercial beekeepers work to minimize colony losses
Beekeeper Lee Townsend is preparing for the sweet stuff.
Within the next few weeks, he’ll have more than 3,000 hives with up to 160,000 bees in each one making honey.
But right now, at TPLR Honey Farms in Stony Plain, he’s monitoring the health of the bees and making sure they’re eating enough as they get ready for honey production.
“They go bonkers for the sugar syrup,” he says, pointing to barrels of liquid sucrose. Each hive will go through two gallons of the sticky stuff in a couple of days.
Over the winter, Townsend lost 12 per cent of his bees — a huge improvement from just a few years ago, when commercial beekeepers on the Prairies were losing more than double that amount.
“In some years when we have a long, cold spring, that 30 per cent (loss) will increase to about 40 per cent,” said Medhat Nasr, Alberta’s provincial apiculturist, or head beekeeper.
“Our statistics show that (normal loss is) 15 to 20 per cent, which is a long-term average, and that’s kind of accepted by the beekeepers.”
The province has been teaching its commercial beekeepers preventive measures to ensure minimal losses, like monitoring the bees, identifying any diseases right away and taking care of the parasites.
“I always say, it’s similar to what you do for yourself every year when you have to go for your annual checkup,” Nasr said.
“They became more aware of bee health.”
Between 2007 and 2010, Alberta beekeepers were routinely losing 30 per cent of their bees each winter, which coincided with the phenomenon of colony collapse disorder in the United States. Named in 2006, the disorder happens when entire colonies of honey bees disappear.
But Alberta’s problem wasn’t the bees themselves. It was mites.
Similar to ticks on dogs, mites suck the blood of the bees and transmit viruses between them. Plus, these particular mites were resistant to the common mitecide. Luckily, they identified the problem and found a mitecide from France that worked. In the last two to three years, the kill rate had gone down by at least 10 per cent, Nasr said.
“We’ve really done a good job in Alberta realizing we needed to change,” Townsend agreed. “The beekeepers that are successful in Alberta are the ones that are persistent.”
It’s important for the province’s beekeepers to catch any issues right away, because 43 per cent of Canada’s bees are in Alberta. Nasr said in 2007 alone, the province’s bee industry lost $20 million. The cost of replacing the dead bees and loss of crops today would be $54 million.
“We cannot really afford to stay and stick to our old practices,” he said. “Working with the beekeepers, and having them be a part of the solution, and making sure they understand the significance ... we were able to change the course.”
In mid-July, Townsend, who has the most hives in the Edmonton area (Poelman Apiaries in Fort Macleod is the largest in both the province and country with 20,000 hives) will begin the honey harvest. He expects between 190 to 210 pounds of honey from each hive over the course of the season.
“Every year is different,” he said. Every seven to 10 days, they’ll harvest honey from the hives, expecting about 35 pounds from each hive. But sometimes the bees are even busier: Townsend once saw bees produce 40 pounds of honey in a single day.
When the honey is ready, it’ll be shipped to Japan, where the farm has been sending it since 2009.
Both Nasr and Townsend are optimistic about Alberta’s bee future, as long as they anticipate their needs.
“You always want your bees to listen,” Townsend said. “They rarely listen. You listen to them.”