B.C. blueberry crops at centre of buzz over cross-border pollination
B.C.’s blueberry growers could be feeling a $12-million sting this pollination season after three Alberta beekeepers decided to keep their hives at home.
Because blueberry flowers require pollination for their berries to grow, beekeepers — including those from Alberta — lend their hives to growers in the Fraser Valley for a pollination fee each spring.
But for Danny Paradis, who runs a beekeeping operation in Watino, about 450 kilometres northwest of Edmonton, a poor season last year that harmed his bees’ health meant it wasn’t worth his time or efforts to return.
“My bees grew well three years prior,” he said. “I didn’t have a complaint until last year when they decided they’re going to use all this new stuff that they have on the market.”
Paradis blames the loss of about 1,000 of his hives on the spraying of fungicides, which are applied to blueberry bushes in bloom to prevent fungus in the berries.
“My bees were dying. They were spraying all around me, all next door, everywhere,” Paradis said. “They don’t understand their technologies. They don’t understand the effects of it. I just said ‘OK, screw it.’ I’m a northern Alberta guy, this is my home, I’ll do it this way this year. Less headaches.”
With Alberta keepers staying home, the Fraser Valley is about 3,000 to 4,000 colonies short of the 45,000 that typically pollinate the berries each year, costing growers $12 million in lost fruit, said B.C. beekeeper John Gibeau of the Honeybee Centre, the Fraser Valley’s top blueberry-pollinator operation.
But Gibeau disagrees that agricultural practices, such as the spraying of fungicides, are to blame for all the buzz.
“Last year was a hard year weather-wise,” he said. “When there’s a long cold winter and a long cold spring, the bee health becomes compromised. Despite the beekeepers’ best efforts, they get a fungus because of the wet and the cold and it’s hard to shake it ... But, unfortunately, some of them have chosen to blame the blueberry growers for spraying fungicide as the cause and there’s nothing further from the truth.”
Gibeau said the issue is cyclical. This year, conditions have improved, and so has the health of bees.
“The growers have not changed their practices in spraying for as long as I know, and I’ve been in this business for 40 years,” he said.
Nor have the majority of the 600 blueberry growers in the province expressed concern about a lack of bees available to pollinate this year’s crop, said Anju Gill, executive director of the B.C. Blueberry Council.
“Are there less bees than previous years? We don’t know for sure, but there doesn’t seem to be a desperate cry for more at this point,” she said.
Still, concerns like those raised by Paradis are being taken seriously. The B.C. Honey Producers’ Association has partnered with the University of British Columbia, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, the National Bee Diagnostic Centre and the province’s Ministry of Agriculture to launch a study of the issue. The blueberry council is supporting the study, Gill said.
“We’re still not certain what exactly is the issue,” she said. “There needs to be a better knowledge on this rather than anecdotal information.”
Kerry Clark, president of the B.C. Honey Producers’ Association, said multiple factors could have been at play last year, including both bad weather and agricultural practices.
“In the last few years, it’s become known that fungicides, which are applied to blueberry bushes in bloom to prevent fungus in the berries, have an effect on bees. It used to be thought that they are harmless, but there’s evidence now that they are not,” Clark said.
“What shows up as a disease in colonies may be a matter of poor nutrition.
“We’re looking for solutions.”