Problem pests, hungry wasps and ‘two winters’ in one has been hard on B.C.’s bee hives
It was before winter had even arrived that Jeff Lee and Amanda Goodman Lee knew they were in trouble.
“The wasps were coming out in droves,” Goodman Lee said of the raided hives in one yard. “It was like a horror movie. We both were just almost in tears.” Lee estimated beekeepers can only really sustain about 10 to 15 per cent losses and still be in business. For Honey Bee Zen, its 70 per cent losses were unsustainable, “and that’s even before we had our hives go into winter,” Lee said.Honey Bee Zen opted to fly in 150 packages of bees from New Zealand in a bid to replenish its stocks in time to meet this year’s pollination demand.
Kerry Clark, the president of the B.C. Honey Producers Association, said a combination of factors are putting bees under pressure. Among them are mites, fungus, wasps and problematic weather that turns from cold to hot and back to cold again. When bees figure winter is over, they increase the rate of consumption of food, Clark said.
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