The buzz about bees
As honey bee populations collapse elsewhere, one Yk hobbyist tries to boost the local population
Laura Busch
Northern News Services
Published Friday, April 18, 2014
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
The sudden collapse of the global honey bee population is more than just buzz - it poses a real threat to food security and human health.
This is part of the reason why, in the spring of 2012, Yellowknifer Chris Johnston decided to try his hand at beekeeping.
"Without bees, there's no food. It's pretty much that simple," he said.
With the support of friend and owner of Arctic Farmer, Darwin Rudkevitch, and Johnston's daughter urging him on, Johnston brought two million bees in four hives North of 60 to see how they would do.
After one of the harshest winters on recent record, all of the bees were dead come springtime.
Far from deterred, Johnston tried again and brought up even more bees last spring - this time with $20,000 in funding from the Department of Industry, Tourism and Investment.
Ten million honey bees were brought in from New Zealand. At $300 per hive for 25 hives, the price tag was not cheap, said Johnston, who estimates that his beekeeping endeavours have cost more than $40,000 so far, excluding labour.
Throughout the summer, things went well.
Rudkevitch said having the bees around made for huge increases to the vegetable yield at his business. He has also noticed several more buds on flowers grown near the property.
Basking in their new found freedom, the bees from down under - which are noticeably smaller and more yellow than their larger, darker bumble bee cousins commonly found in the NWT - travelled a range of about 10 km in search of pollen. Rudkevitch said the bees were seen as far away as downtown.
As winter closed in, a sea can was converted into
a heated storage space for
the bees - a new addition since the prior winter's total die off.
So far, five of the original 25 hives are alive, and Johnston is cautiously optimistic that they will make it the rest of the way through the winter.
"Really, what you're mainly concerned about is will the queen make it," he said. "It would be great to eventually have acclimatized queens that could start a healthy population up here."
Aside from figuring out how to keep bees alive through the winter, the amount of food available to them may not be enough to sustain a large population. With no clover fields or agriculture industry to speak of, Johnston and his volunteer beekeepers also fed the bees throughout the summer.
Eventually, Johnston said he would consider leasing out hives during the summer to gardeners and look into the feasibility of partnering with community gardens.
"But we haven't even gotten to the point where we have the smaller-scale figured out yet," he said.
Despite the costs, the setbacks and the amount of labour required to maintain a honey bee colony, Johnston said he won't be giving up any time soon.
"It's been kind of an engineering feat, just to try to figure them all out," he said.
"You're kind of trying to play Mother Nature with a helping hand."
The honey bee population could use all the help it can get.
According to the Canadian Honey Council, 28.6 per cent of Canada's honey bees died during the winter last year, up from 15.5 per cent the previous year.
In Alberta, 23.8 per cent of honey bees died over the winter of 2012-13, up from 13 per cent the year before, according to the Canadian Association of Professional Apiculturists.
Since 2006, honey bee population collapses have also been recorded in the U.S., France, Spain, the U.K. and China.
The tiny insects may be seen as little more than pests to some, but they are vital pollinators and without them, global food supply chains could collapse.
In an ominous prediction, the late scientist Albert Einstein once said that "mankind will not survive the honeybee's disappearance for more than five years."
It is not yet known what is killing off the honey bee, but some theories point to pesticides, electromagnetic interference from cell phone towers and power lines, parasites and mites. A syndrome named colony collapse occurs when worker bees seem to abandon hives with the queen and young still inside - even common bee predators refuse to enter the infected hives for weeks. The cause of colony collapse is also unknown.
If he can get the bees to survive the winter, Johnston says his bees may actually have a better chance of survival than their southern counterparts.
The -40 C temperatures in the winter kills mites and parasites, so hives are effectively decontaminated each year.
"In a way, you could say I have really, really good luck," he joked about the frigid winter temperatures for the past two years.
