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Unusual weather conditions and other environmental challenges have hit the area’s honeybee population hard this year, says a Harrow-area bee farmer.
Annual bee loss statistics for the 2023-24 overwinter have not yet been published by the Canadian Association of Professional Apiculturists, but Dale Wright, co-owner of Hawksview Honey north of Belcreft Beach, said he’s seen a significant decline in area bee numbers this summer.
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“I’ve been doing these for about eight years now,” Wright told the Star Thursday. “If I was running a single colony, I could keep the colony … of 50,000 or 60,000 bees.
“I’m having trouble keeping 40,000 alive in a box. It’s getting to be a considerable drop.”
Wright doesn’t attribute the drop in numbers to any one individual factor, but rather, several things are stressing bees.
Last summer was particularly wet — several hard downpours flooded parts of Essex County — which meant crop farmers had to spray more fungicides to combat mould.
Research published in Bee Culture, the magazine of American beekeeping, said fungicides are the most commonly found pesticide in honeybee hives. Bees can stray several kilometres from the hive, so they can visit many sources of chemicals and bring them back.
Most fungicides do not directly kill bees, but because they are exposed to farm chemicals repeatedly over a long period of time, they can weaken bees, which may reduce their ability to forage and reproduce.
Any additional stresses on bees can compound the problem. And those are the conditions bees face at the moment, said Wright.
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Last summer, there was also a lot of smoke in the air due to forest fires in Northern Ontario. Smoky air lowers temperatures so bees aren’t as active. This past winter was mild — enjoyable for humans, but “it was bad for the bees, in a way, because they were too busy,” said Wright. “They were out and about and eating all their resources.”
On top of the stress brought on by unusual weather, bees are exposed to various other chemicals on farmers’ fields, including a class of pesticide called neonicotinoids, which are used on crops and seeds to protect them from insects.
Health Canada says while neonicotinoids don’t kill bee colonies on their own, they can have an effect on the bee population when combined with other stressors.
“The available science suggests that multiple factors acting in combination may be at play (for bee colony decline), including loss of habitat and food sources, diseases, viruses and pests, and pesticide exposure,” Health Canada says.
But these chemicals can slow down laying of eggs by queen bees and cause nerve problems, said Wright.
“Farmers plant their fields in the springtime, and the bees go to these plants and get this chemical on them and take it back to the hive and they transfer one to the other, and next thing you know it’s just contaminated your hive.
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“It’s a double-edged sword. People use the bees to pollinate things. Once things are pollinated then they go spray their fields or their orchard to kill the insects.”
And then there’s the presence of varro mites, which attach themselves to adult and developing honeybees, feeding on their body fluids and bodies.
“We have a way of treating (mites) as beekeepers, but when you start getting one or two different situations going at the same time, it really puts a stress level up on the bees, which in effect, causes bees to just die off.”
Wright has 82 hives at the moment and ran 120 last summer. He went into winter with 100 hives and came out with 60.
The Harrow beekeeper doesn’t blame farmers. He says they’re just doing what they must to ensure they have a crop.
Better education is needed for farmers and the public on the use of pesticides, he said, and more research is needed into their effects on the environment.
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