Vancouver bee populations in decline

NANAIMO, B.C. (CUP) — Bees — they are perhaps the single-most important insect on the planet. About three-quarters of the world's crops depend on animal pollination, largely from bees, to continue in fruition.

Yet there is now a greater shortage of bees than ever, leaving the future of beekeepers and farmers alike in complete uncertainty.

Farmers from central and southern Vancouver Island know all too well the hardships of dwindling bee stocks. The region is facing the most honeybee die-offs it has ever seen.

Stan Reist, president of the B.C. Honey Producers Association, told the Globe and Mail that between the island's largest communities of Nanaimo and Victoria, about 90 per cent of bees have been lost.

Many beekeepers blame the high mortality rate on the varroa mite, a parasite that began afflicting the Vancouver Island bee population around 1997, but Reist is not certain that is cause enough for such a drastic loss. While samples are in for testing, he told the Globe that "we still don't have a valid reason for what's going on."

Another potential reason for bee die-offs has been the awkward weather patterns of the past winter seasons. On Vancouver Island, this winter has been unseasonably warm with some cold snaps coming intermittently in mid-February.

Whether the weather is to blame or not for the island's losses, bee populations have been hit hard worldwide, and weather cannot be entirely to blame here. The Times of India reported last year that electromagnetic waves emitted by mobile-phone towers affected honeybee colonies.

The waves, researcher Sainuddin Pattazhy told the Times, may hinder worker bees' navigational skills during their quests to collect nectar from flowers for their colonies. He found that worker bees were unable to return to their hives if a mobile phone was placed nearby, leading to colonies' collapse.

Whether or not the issue is mobile phones, cold snaps, or parasites, the beekeepers on Vancouver Island need to find a way to make it through the season. The only option so far has been to import bee stocks from abroad.

"We have to be able to bring queen bees in under special permit," Steve Mitchell, owner of the island's Bee Haven Farms, told the Nanaimo Bulletin. "Our best hope is to have easy access to stocks with strong queen bees. If that happened, (bee farmers) would be able to distribute healthy stocks quite quickly. But right now we are having to import from Chile."

Sol Nowitz, owner of Jinglepot Apiaries in Nanaimo, told the Globe that bees from the southern hemisphere aren't capable of handling Canadian cold or natural diseases. Having lost nearly 260 of his 275 hives since 2007, he wants British Columbia to allow imports from other parts of Canada. If the province accepts, he believes that next year's losses will not be so drastic.