Thank you for having us here today.
My name is Jean-François Doyon and I represent the Groupe DJF. I have been involved in beekeeping for over 45 years, with my wife. We have two sons who are of the age to take over, but they are very worried about the bee losses suffered in the last several years.
To give you an idea of our business, last year we recorded losses that resulted in a deficit of over $1.5 million in biological assets. You will undoubtedly understand that when you are 30 years old, that kind of deficit, combined with a net reduction in income, is very troubling. As well, with losses like that, my wife and I are having to postpone our objective of retiring.
Groupe DJF is a collection of several companies, one of which is Distributions D.J.F. Inc., which processes, packages and distributes honey under the trademark Le Miel d'Émilie. All our products can be found in the three largest grocery chains in Quebec.
Two of the other companies produce honey and engage in large-scale pollination. So we really are commercial beekeepers. We have over 10,000 hives, spread over three farms in the greater Quebec City region.
I am truly honoured to be here today to talk to you about the problems we have been experiencing with bees for several years, with which you are certainly familiar. This definitely shows the interest you are taking in these problems and in how useful bees are in the food chain.
I am going to skip over the details in terms of the percentages that bees contribute to food production, but I want to tell you that these insects are really very important. Together, we have to get a handle on things and do it fast. If we want to continue to have professional beekeepers, we are also going to need programs to help the next generation.
For over a year, we have had an app called "nectar". This is a tool for hive management and traceability.
Just now, I heard some descriptions of various training programs. A number of training programs are offered in Quebec. The "nectar" traceability system, for example, means that each hive has its own labels that we can use to see the movements of each of the hives, the provenance of the queens, and the varroa population counts. Every time we screen for varroa, it is recorded in our data, so when we suffer bee losses in the fall or winter, we know what caused them. We have very good hive monitoring.
Because we are a major player in Quebec, this system is very useful to us. However, it is harder to adapt it to the needs of small beekeepers, because it is designed for businesses of a certain size. So we are working with several beekeeping operations that are a bit smaller than ours to give them the opportunity to use our system.
In addition, we have observed certain trends since we started using this system a year and a half ago. We do suspect a number of factors that might explain bee losses, such as pesticides, viruses, varroa, and so on. We will have to look into this problem quickly and we are going to have to invest a huge amount of money in research.
Tech transfer teams were mentioned earlier. In Quebec, professional beekeepers really do not have access to very much in this area. It is important to provide them with access to teams like this, preferably Canadian.
I would also like to talk more specifically about spraying with neonicotinoids, these synthetic pesticides that are causing us huge problems.
Another problem we are having relates to new agronomists coming out of university. They are recommending spraying pesticides, when the trend is actually to regional seeds.
As well, we are asking farmers to develop buffer strips and sow nectar-rich plants. We are also asking them to stop mowing alongside roads and highways and instead plant nectar-rich flowers, to have flower diversity and let bees feed on good pollen.
Thank you.