{"id":18715,"date":"2022-06-16T07:32:54","date_gmt":"2022-06-16T14:32:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/?p=18715"},"modified":"2023-07-25T06:06:36","modified_gmt":"2023-07-25T13:06:36","slug":"unusually-high-bee-die-off-in-canada-will-impact-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/?p=18715","title":{"rendered":"Unusually High Bee Die-Off In Canada Will Impact The World"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By Sara Tipton<\/a><\/p>\n

An unusually high honey bee die-off in Canada is going to impact the world\u2019s farming system. Bees are necessary pollinators and help in all agricultural industries.<\/p>\n

In 2020, the total\u00a0estimated contribution from the Canadian honey and bee industry<\/a>was between $4 to $5.5 billion. But over this past winter, beekeepers across the province are reporting<\/u><\/a> major losses of up to 90 percent of their colonies, according to the Ontario Beekeepers\u2019 Association.<\/p>\n

The Basics of Beekeeping For Beginners<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the worst that we have ever seen and I\u2019ve been doing this for 50 years,\u201d George Scott told CBC Hamilton. \u201cIn Niagara, we\u2019ve lost thousands of colonies. Most of our operations here are so severely impaired that we are not going to provide pollination services this year,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe believe, and we can document the loss in Canada of farmgate revenue of over $1 billion. So, that\u2019s farmers who are not going to have that revenue because pollination is not going to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eduard Unger owns B-Y\u2019s Honey Farm at Niagara-on-the-Lake. He says he\u2019s been a bee farmer all his life and the bee die-off this year is unprecedented. \u201cIt will have a big impact on the whole agriculture industry, like all the farmers. The grape farmers, the food farmers, the blueberry farmers, and everybody. They want bees from us, they\u2019re calling on us for bees from far away and they cannot get bees. It has never been like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Roy Allemann, president of the Golden Horseshoe Beekeepers\u2019 Association of Greater Hamilton, Brant, and Halton Regions said agrees with Scott about the bee die-off. His losses were massive as well. \u201cWe\u2019ve got another problem of really catastrophic proportions \u2026 We are looking at now a rather drastic combination of industries that are very, very common in Canada, and they are fungicides combining with insecticides.\u201d<\/p>\n

Allemann believes \u201can over-reliance on agricultural chemicals\u201d is a significant contributor to an increase in bee deaths, especially in the last 10 years.<\/p>\n

New Study Suggests Glyphosate Can Kill Bees By Damaging Their Microbiomes<\/a><\/p>\n

But government officials are saying it\u2019s the varroa mite that\u2019s causing the problem, but beekeepers disagree. \u201cWe\u2019ve been dealing with mites for about 30 years, if not a little bit longer. There are very well known mite controls that are used by a lot of experienced beekeepers that work, and we\u2019ve been using them for that long,\u201d Allemann told CBC News.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

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Not only is it the agricultural chemicals that have become all to prevalent in the farming industry, but the shipping delays have also been responsible for killing off bees. In fact, about 5 million honeybees bound for\u00a0Alaska<\/a> last weekend were delayed when Delta Air Lines routed them through Atlanta, where most of the bees died after being left for hours in crates on the ground during hot weather.<\/p>\n

E-Course: Bio-Intensive Gardening<\/em><\/a><\/h4>\n

These bees were imperative to Alaska. They were the first of two shipments ordered by Alaska beekeeper Sarah McElrea from a distributor in California. The bees were to be used to pollinate apple orchards and nurseries in Alaska, where they are not native. McElrea called a beekeeper in Atlanta to check, and she found clumps of dead bees.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s devastating to see that many dead,\u201d\u00a0Georgia<\/a> beekeeper Julia Mahood told Atlanta broadcaster WABE. \u201cJust clumps of dead bees that had no chance because they were left outside with no food and basically got lost in Delta\u2019s machinery.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bees are very sensitive to chemicals<\/a>, which is the biggest reason why the overall bee population has declined in recent years.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe hazard that we\u2019re experiencing now, of course, is that the sprays that they use on the plants have a nicotinoid base<\/a> to them,\u201d said Jack States of Lander, Wyoming who is a bee hobbyist,<\/a> but was born into a beekeeping family. \u201cThe new class of pesticides are just insidious, they have a fairly long residual time out there, and it gradually causes the colony to suffer from attrition to the point where they can\u2019t maintain themselves. And that\u2019s devastating to us because we depend on the strongest colony population we can get to get the maximum amount of both pollination service and honey byproduct.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bees in neighboring Idaho have also been relatively healthy, even though beekeepers in Idaho have had to deal with varroa mites this past winter. But managing mites has not been a problem for most beekeepers, and many are still saying that pesticides and glyphosate are the biggest problems.<\/p>\n

As a beekeeper, we don\u2019t \u201cmow\u201d our dandelions or clover. The bees rely on those \u201cweeds\u201d for pollen. But many homes do, and in the suburbs, it\u2019s normal to see someone spraying chemicals to rid their lawn of both. In fact, in order to help bees and other pollinators such as bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds, we planted extra perennial plants that are great for pollinators and removed entire sections of \u201clawn\u201d to create a wildflower meadow of flowers that pollinators love.<\/p>\n

Even if you don\u2019t keep bees, you could help pollinators by planting the following:<\/strong><\/p>\n