Big bee losses
Two beekeepers struggling to recover after losing a number of hives during the winter
When Kenneth Peters of O’Leary went to check on his beehives this spring, he was met with a disappointing sight when he discovered 90 per cent of his bees were dead. “You open one hive and you think it’s just the one, no big deal, but as you go through and you are getting one dead hive after another, it is very deflating.” Peters, who owns Ken’s Honey Bee Farm, says he lost all but two of his 20 beehives this winter. He is not the only beekeeper to experience losses. Peters has heard from multiple beekeepers who experienced the same thing when they opened their beehives this spring. “It was an exceptionally bad year,” said Peters. Peters says some beekeepers were completely wiped out while others experienced “big losses.” Peters said he knows of one beekeeper who lost upwards of 500 of his 700 beehives. “That is a big, big loss,” said Peters. Kenneth Lewis, president of the P.E.I. Beekeepers Association, says this is the first time he has experienced such big losses. He says at least 50 per cent of his bees were dead this spring with many of the remaining ones considered to be weak hives. He has combined some of the weaker hives with stronger hives in the hopes that the stronger ones will help the weaker ones. Lewis said he has never heard of such widespread losses on P.E.I. “It’s the worst year I’ve seen,” said Lewis who lives in Cascumpec and has been beekeeping since 2005. “I know of other people that have had losses over the years, but it’s usually one or two individuals, it’s usually not so many people.” Peters said he took all the necessary precautions to get his bees through the winter. However, the one thing he has no control over is the weather and he feels this is why so many of his bees died this winter. “There would be some disease and some pests that would claim some of the hives, but by and large it is the erratic weather that is making it difficult for well-seasoned beekeepers.” Bees wander around the frame on warmer days and get caught spread out over the frame when the temperature drops at night, he explained. “They need food to vibrate to keep the nest warm and if there is no food where they are at, they have no way of maintaining a heat supply, so they just starve to death.” Lewis says he is hearing from a few P.E.I. beekeepers that varroa mite and the hot dry summer last year may have contributed to their losses. “The quality of the pollen and nectar wasn’t there, so it didn’t produce the quality of bees that it should have going into winter.” Lewis said these losses put beekeepers in a bad situation. “It takes your profit away,” said Lewis. “You can’t take that [hit] a whole lot of times in a row or you will be out of business.” Peters says his remaining bees are the strongest ones he has had in his six years of beekeeping and is busy trying help his numbers grow by generating some queens. However, as a result of his low bee numbers, he won’t be renting out his bees to blueberry farmers this year, which means he will have to find another way to pay the bills. “I have too much work to do,” said Peters. “It will be a loss year.” Going forward, Peters would like to see government support to help beekeepers through this difficult time. “Beekeepers, for the next little while, will be spending quite a bit of money to build up their hives again, and government support would be nice if only for a couple of years so that the bigger farmers can get back on their feet.” Lewis encourages people not to cut down dandelions as frequently since bees really like them and for farmers to grow things like white clover, mustard, buckwheat and sunflowers. The province is currently in the process of receiving colony loss surveys from P.E.I. beekeepers. Those numbers won’t be available for another couple of weeks.