Niagara bees bound for East Coast
Niagara is “the most beautiful place maybe in the world” if you’re a bee, says apiarist George Scott.
“Our micro, mini-climate here is so good that we should be maximizing it and supplying the world with bees and hiring out kids to do that,” says Scott, managing director of The Niagara Beeway.
But despite living in the land of milk and honey, Niagara’s bees are not immune to problems that have decimated bee populations worldwide.
Scott says bee populations are declining primarily due to the use of pesticides such as neonicotinoids.
Historically, he says, about 80 per cent of bees survived the winter, but “now we’re losing anywhere between 60 and 100 per cent of our bees every year.”
Even deicing solutions used by municipalities to keep roads clear in the winter can have a devastating impact on bee populations, Scott says.
“The costs have gone up tremendously for the big beekeepers,” he says. “They’re full of worry.”
Bees, he adds, are also becoming less efficient and producing less honey as a result.
“We’re not getting 100 pounds of honey in a hive anymore, we’re getting 20.”
Unless the problems are resolved, Scott estimates that food prices will likely triple because of the lack of pollination.
Meanwhile, he says Niagara’s rural landscapes are quickly disappearing to make way for new homes, eliminating areas where bees once thrived.
“We are paving it as fast as we can.”
Local apiarists, however, are teaming up with industries in the hope of keeping Niagara’s bees safe and healthy.
Scott says his group worked with local beekeepers Welland Apiaries to facilitate an agreement with Ontario Power Generation to allow 800 beehives — each containing about 20,000 bees — to be located at hydro generation sites throughout the region, including Sir Adam Beck and DeCew power stations.
Scott says the OPG sites are close to clean water and “less susceptible to some of the toxicities that are now common everywhere here in Niagara.”
OPG site environmental adviser Meredith Crouch says the initiative also fits in with OPG’s biodiversity plans, adopted for each of its sites.
“It’s important to us to be good community partners, but it’s also important to be good stewards for the environment,” Crouch says while on a Wednesday visit to dozens of beehives at the Sir Adam Beck station.
She says the isolated locations also protect people who might be concerned about getting stung.
“We choose locations away from where people are working. We’re relatively isolated from people and industries.”
Scott says his group is working to find additional industrial sites for beehives.
The bees at the power stations will soon have a chance to live up to their busy reputation.
This week, those beehives were being loaded aboard transport trucks bound for New Brunswick, about 1,500 kilometres away. The Niagara bees will spend the next month pollinating blueberries for Oxford Frozen Foods, the largest supplier of wild blueberries in the world. Scott says the blueberries in New Brunswick are in bloom and ready for pollination at a time when bees there are just waking up after hibernating for the winter months.
The bees from Niagara, however, are ready to get to work.
“The blueberries come at a time when their bees are not ready, whereas our bees are at full strength, and well-practised. They’re tackle tested, and healthy,” he says.
“The superb bees that are raised by our beekeepers here in Niagara are loaded onto trucks with competent beekeepers who drive them there and baby-sit them and put them in the field.”
He says an acre of blueberry bushes without bees, relying on wind for pollination, will typically bring in about $4,000.
“You put bees in there and you can make $12,000 an acre. When you’ve got 50,000 acres times $12,000, you are the exporter from Canada to Europe,” Scott says. “You are a multimillion-dollar guy and you hire bee guys.”
At the end of the season, Scott says, the local bees will be returned to spend the rest of the year “in one of the most god-blessed beautiful places on the entire planet to do this.”