Okay. It's not a problem. I'll go through it and try to be halfway speedy.
I'll tell you a bit about myself. I've been a beekeeper for 20 years. Some people think I'm young. Maybe I look younger than I am, but I started when I was 16, and I'm currently 36 years old. I'm involved both in honey production and in supplying bees for pollination services to the hybrid canola seed industry.
Honeybee farms are large and intensive operations nowadays. Most people don't realize that. We have just as much capital invested in our operations as some large cattle and grain farms. There's a common question that I get asked. People often can't believe that I do this for a living and think that I must do something else on the side, but beekeeping can be done on a fairly large scale. People just don't seem to get that.
As we all know, honeybees and their health have been in the headlines numerous times over the past few years. Unfortunately, most of the media have not been willing to present all the factors affecting bee health but are aiming at only a single factor, that being pesticides. In my opinion, this is very short-sighted. There are many factors affecting bee health. I'd like to share a few of them with you and let you know that there's still much more work to be done. There is some ongoing work, which is very good as well.
Some of the main factors that affect bee health are pests and disease, habitat and nutrition, pesticides, of course, and weather and climate.
For pests and disease, across the country most beekeepers on the whole still say that the varroa mite is the biggest challenge we face. So far, we have effective controls, I guess, to control this mite. It's a parasitic mite that lives on the honeybee. If you make your hand into a fist and put it on your chest, that is representative of what a varroa mite is on a honeybee. It's quite a significant pest, and it sits there and feeds off the hemolymph, the bee's blood. These mites are very aggressive when they do get control, and they lead to viruses that are just as devastating as the mite, or more so, as it takes so much time to get the viruses under control. If not managed well, the mite and the viruses can decimate a beekeeping operation quite quickly.
At this point in time, the industry feels that we do not have enough effective control products in place to be sustainable. We seem to get a product and use it until we get signs of resistance, and then we're scrambling to find an alternative. We feel that we are near the end of the time period of our current control, and so far there is no equal replacement. There are less than a handful of products being screened; however, no silver bullet has been found. This is very frustrating for beekeepers, as individual operations have millions of dollars invested in their livestock, and the research community is not able to find solutions or wait till the last days to try to find one.
There are other pests and diseases that are also very important to manage, but I won't bog you down right now with descriptions of them all. We have work to do on others as well.
In terms of habitat and nutrition, this has become a very high need for our bees and has been recognized as a very significant factor over the past few years. Just like us, when bees eat a well-balanced diet, they are healthier and able to fight off potential threats as their immune systems may not be so suppressed. Supplemental feeding of our bees has become one of the larger expenses of operating our farms. All regions of Canada go through periods throughout the year when they need to feed their bees; however, it seems that we are feeding more than ever before.
There are three factors that we believe have led to this change. There are changes in agricultural practices and in crops being grown, and weather and climate may also play a role. Farming has become so efficient and clean. Years ago, fields used to have weeds, which are typically a great source of food for bees. Equipment has become very large and efficient. What used to take a farmer three or four days, such as cutting a field of alfalfa, can now be done in a half a day. We also see a lot of monoculture, which greatly reduces the diversity of soil sources. We now see many shelterbelts and hedgerows being removed in order to make the land more productive, and irrigation pivots have extensions on them to get deep into corners that before would have been left to native pasture in some cases.
We also see changes in the vegetation in natural areas and lands under management by municipalities. Where we used to see naturally occurring soil varieties, we just don't see them in abundance anymore. Many municipalities and counties are also doing a lot of vegetation management to control unwanted growth; however, it usually takes out the flowering vegetation, which also may be good for bees.
We know pesticides are meant to control pests. Yes, some pesticides can be toxic to honeybees, but there are also many pesticides out there that are safe to use around bees. When products are used responsibly and the label is followed, most risks can be alleviated.
In Ontario, the provincial government has taken steps to reduce the use of neonics, as some beekeepers there were pointing to the use of neonics as the reason for their high winter losses.
In 2012, Ontario had the lowest overwintering losses in Canada. They then experienced three years of very high losses. Interestingly enough, from all reports to date, Ontario and Quebec had some of the lowest winter losses across the country this year, and these new regulations are only being put into practice as we speak right now. This just goes to show that there are many factors affecting bee health, not just one.
The value of honey also plays a role in bee health in Canada. In good times, beekeepers are able to invest more into their livestock. In a down market, it becomes more difficult. Over the past 15 months, we have seen honey prices drop over 50%, and there are beekeepers who are still sitting on last year's production. Meanwhile, we see honey being imported into Canada and the U.S., our biggest customer, from places such as India, Myanmar, Thailand, Spain, and Vietnam, which are all suspect countries for supplying transshipped or adulterated honey from China.
The need to monitor bee health is higher than it has ever been. Bees are transported across the country for pollination, and we import stock from other countries. Provincially, there have been many monitoring or surveillance programs. However, the information that is collected is not done in a standard procedure across all the provinces and cannot be recognized for things such as international trade and evaluating risk assessments.
The Manitoba Beekeepers' Association, along with the Alberta Beekeepers Commission, has initiated a project to create a national database on bee health. We are currently in year three, and by the end of year four there will have been samples analyzed right across the country. This work is being done by the relatively new National Bee Diagnostic Centre, which is in Beaverlodge, Alberta.
The National Bee Diagnostic Centre has also been a valuable tool to the industry. Beekeepers are able to submit samples for analysis in order to find out what the health status of their bees is within the samples. Personally, I have used this lab, and I am part of the research program that is being done.
Just as an aside, it is very interesting to get the live reports from the lab there, because they do PCR analysis and find these viruses for which we don't see physical symptoms in the hive. However, it is showing up on a PCR analysis, so we know it is hiding there in the background, and maybe we never get rid of that. We have to be really cautious and keep a close eye to see those physical symptoms being displayed. Hopefully we don't.
The Canadian Honey Council also rolled out a new manual to producers this winter, which incorporates the national bee biosecurity program, as well as an on-farm food safety program. We hope this will be a valuable tool for producers.
Some provinces have tech transfer teams in place, and some provinces are just introducing one, as we heard from our previous speaker.
In the Maritimes, the beekeeping industry is well positioned with the growth of the blueberry industry. It will be a challenge for the beekeeping industry to meet the needs, and there will be health challenges that go along with that, as anytime there is a large-scale pollination event, it is a melting pot for pest and disease exposure.
The bee health round table has been an extremely positive step for our industry, which has facilitated bringing stakeholders together to discuss challenges around bee health and to try to find some solutions.