Beekeepers are accustomed to getting stung, but the beekeeping industry both in Canada and the United States has been experiencing a sting of a different kind lately—one that may have serious ramifications.
Beekeepers on both sides of the border sustained heavy hive losses this winter, but seemingly for different reasons. In about 24 U.S. states, hundreds of millions of honey bees have been abandoning their hives and vanishing completely, posing a threat to the beekeeping industry and fruit and vegetable growers alike.
The phenomenon, which has never been seen before in the history of beekeeping and has so far baffled scientists, has been called colony collapse disorder, or CCD. Starting last fall, bee colonies across the U.S. suddenly and mysteriously began fleeing the hive and not returning, leaving the queen behind.
Theories abound, and everything from pesticide-ridden crops to stress to GMOs to cell phone frequencies have been blamed. Britain, Spain, Greece, and some other European countries have also had bouts of CCD.
With more than 90 crops in North America depending on bees for pollination in an industry worth an estimated $14 billion a year to the U.S. economy, it's not surprising that the American government is taking CCD very seriously. But has it appeared in Canada?
Entomologist Diana Cox-Foster, one of a group of researchers forming the Colony Collapse Disorder Working Group, said in a prepared testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives in March that CCD has been reported in two Canadian provinces. But Brent Halsall, president of the Ontario Beekeepers Association, says as far as he knows that isn't the case.
Nevertheless, Canadian bees have been taking a hit, too. In parts of Ontario, B.C. and the Maritimes, some beekeepers have lost up to 90 per cent of their bees, and while CCD doesn't appear to be the problem because the bees died in the hives, beekeepers are not sure exactly what caused so many deaths.
"We've suffered a lot of losses here this year, they're really unprecedented, and we're quite concerned about it," says Halsall.
The Ontario Ministry of Agriculture is teaming up with the University of Guelph to look into the problem, and the Ontario Beekeeper's Association has asked for financial compensation for lost bees.
Halsall's theory is that a sudden cold snap in mid-January in Ontario may have prompted the bees to try to protect the larvae and pupae by covering them, with the result they weren't able to reach the honey and starved to death. He says that although losses of between 10 and 18 per cent are common in beekeeping, in his 30 years in the business he's never seen anything of this magnitude.
According to the Canadian Honey Council, the value of bees to pollination is more than $1 billion. Canada's 10,000 beekeepers produce about 70 million pounds of honey annually, half of which is exported, mostly to the U.S. Approximately 80 per cent of the country's honey is produced in the Prairie Provinces. Pollination of hybrid canola is vital in Alberta, where 50,000 colonies are needed for seed production.
John Gibeau, president of the B.C. Honey Producers Association, says most of the bees that were over-wintered in B.C. suffered losses of up to 80 per cent. He blames a variety of factors, such as an unusually cold winter, a resurgence of some diseases that haven't been seen since the late 1980s, and the dreaded verroa mite, "the number one problem in the world" for beekeepers.
The varroa mite, a parasite that feeds on young bees making them weak and deformed, has been a scourge to North American beekeepers for over a decade. Another pest that's causing big problems south of the border but hasn't appeared in Canada yet is the destructive hive beetle. Beekeepers have reported rapid collapse of colonies after infestation by this tiny beetle.
Prince Edward Island Green Party leader Sharon Labchuk, who keeps organic "small cell" bees, says the big commercial beekeepers run their operations like factory farms, which isn't always beneficial to the health of the bees. In order to ward off mites, diseases, and viruses, insecticides and antibiotics have to be used, which, according to experts, undermines the bees' immune system and interferes with the ability of the queen to spawn as many worker bees.
"You've got these guys with the varroa problems, they're putting pesticides in the hives, they're whacking the antibiotics to them, they're hauling them around on trucks to pollinate crops that have been sprayed with pesticides in industrial areas—the bees don't have a chance," says Labchuk.
Labchuk says she's on an organic beekeeping list of about 1,000 people, mostly Americans—some of whom run big commercial operations—and none have a problem with verroa mites or CCD. Organic small cell beekeeping, she says, has an advantage because it mimics how the bees live in nature, and while it produces smaller bees, they're healthy and can cope with the low levels of mite infestation that might occur.
The main problem with "large cell" beekeeping, Labchuk says, is that the bees are bred to be much bigger than they would "if left to their own devices." The foundation wax used in the hives has larger cells, which produces bigger bees. This means they spend longer in the breeding process, which allows the varroa mites more time to proliferate and undermine the young bees.
"The factory farm aspects of beekeeping, combined with all sorts of negative environmental factors, puts enough stress on the colonies that they are more susceptible to dying out," says Labchuk.
Between a quarter to a third of North America's food supply relies on pollination, according to Halsall, but honey bees are not the only pollinators; wild bees, bats, birds, and other insects can also do the job. But with modern intensive crop growing, honey bees—and lots of them—are necessary for pollination, says Halsall. "Real efficient, real inexpensive, and it works."
He says that with help from Ontario beekeepers who haven't experienced losses, it's possible for those who have to recover without too much suffering, and this is currently being organized. But Halsall is worried, because over the last five years, each year the numbers of losses have been creeping up, and another wallop like this year could really take a toll.
"We're going to build back up this year, we'll be fine. But what's going to happen next year—that's really what my concern is."
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