Imported bees create a buzz
Foreign swarm needed to replace local colonies lost over winter
Beekeepers in B. C. have just brought in more than 3,000 packages of bees from New Zealand to bolster local colonies needed to pollinate Fraser Valley blueberries.
In what has become an annual event, boxes and tubes each carrying three pounds of bees and equipped with a laying queen began arriving last month at Vancouver International Airport to replace colonies lost over the winter to disease and cold weather. And the import industry is growing because B. C. has neither enough native bee populations nor domestic hives to supply the province’s agriculture sector.
This spring, more than 20,000 packages of bees and more than 100,000 mated queens will be imported to Canada in an effort to shore up the pollination business, a key building block for at least 20 commercial crops, including canola, blueberries, cranberries, raspberries and tree fruits such as apples, peaches, apricots and pears. Although honey is an important product — in 2010, Canada produced 78 million pounds worth $ 145 million — it is pollination that drives the honey bee industry.
In B. C. alone, crops pollinated by bees were worth more than $ 163 million in 2004, the last year for which the B. C. Ministry of Agriculture had statistics. The blueberry crop accounted for $ 65.5 million of that.
Canada is the second- largest producer of blueberries in the world behind the United States, and collectively the two countries meet more than 75 per cent of the world’s demand. B. C. is at the forefront of that, with 12 varieties that bloom between April 15 and May 31.
But with beekeepers over the last five years losing an average of 30 per cent of their hives every winter to disease and cold, they can’t keep up with the demand without help from imports, according to John Gibeau, the owner of the Honeybee Centre in Surrey.
“There are just not enough bees in B. C. to handle all the pollination demands of farmers,” said Gibeau, who provides 4,200 colonies throughout the season to pollinate 11 different crops. “So the industry has turned to importing bees from New Zealand and a few other places to fill that gap.”
Gibeau brought in 637 packages this year.
Alberta commercial beekeepers, who winter some of their colonies in the Fraser Valley, provide about half the bees needed for B. C. blueberries. The rest must come from local beekeepers, but between the two, there are not enough hives to cover all crops.
Bob Fisher, a bee- keeper and blueberry grower who owns West Coast Bee Supply, just installed 50 imported packages in hives to help boost his business. Although he successfully wintered 19 other hives, it wasn’t enough to pollinate the 10 hectares of blueberries he owns or rents. He also sells packages of bees for $ 150 each.
Without those bees, his fruit would not set and his blueberry business would fail.
New Zealand has emerged as the main source of bees for Canada because that southern hemispheric country’s bees are relatively disease- free and are at the end of their season.
More than two decades ago, Canada shut the border to imports from the U. S. when a serious pest from Asia, the Varroa mite, began infecting North American colonies. Although the mite has now spread around the world, the border remains closed to U. S. imports because of the emergence of Africanized honey bees and another pest, the hive beetle.
Jaquie Bunse, the provincial government apiculture inspector for the Fraser Valley, says B. C. bee breeders working with the University of B. C. are trying to develop a strain of bee that can winter well and resist the panoply of diseases now affecting domestic bees. But she said imports are necessary now to meet the demand for commercial pollination.