Evidence of meeting #59 for Agriculture and Agri-Food in the 44th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was bee.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Provincial Apiculturist, Government of British Columbia
Oh boy, you've put me on the spot.
Provincial Apiculturist, Government of British Columbia
All I can say is that we could certainly learn something from the European Union, where they have had subsidies offered to farmers to preserve hedgerows, riparian zones and undisturbed habitat to facilitate the presence of wild pollinators and a lot of other creatures, not just merely those pollinators—
NDP
Alistair MacGregor NDP Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC
Thank you very much for your answer. I'm really sorry to interrupt, but my time is limited.
Mr. Greidanus, I would like to turn to you. You have outlined very clearly the kinds of recommendations you'd like to see in our report, and I think you'll see agreement amongst the members here to try to honour those.
I would like to know a little more about honeybee breeding. I understand the challenges that face them. Within the main class of honeybee we have and that's prevalent around North America, are there any sub-variations? Has there ever been any success or do you foresee any success in trying to breed particular traits that might alleviate some of these issues?
Delegate, Canadian Honey Council, Alberta Beekeepers Commission
Yes, there's a whole pile of different subspecies. The general species is Apis mellifera. There are subspecies of Apis mellifera.
From Africa, there are four subspecies. Paul van Westendorp can probably name them better than I can. I can name three of them. There are Apis mellifera lamarckii, scutellata and monticola. I think there is one more.
Paul, you might have to jump in there and help me out.
As far as what we have for European honeybees is concerned, there are the Italian subspecies. There is a Caucasian subspecies and a Carniolan subspecies.
What we do is breed for winter survivability. We breed for how much honey they are going to produce. We breed for how aggressive and how mean they are to work with, because it's not pleasant when you go out and get stung 100 times a day, working with the bees or whatnot.
These are specific traits. One of the next witnesses I see in the back of the room, who is going to be testifying, is Maggie Boudreau. She is a queen breeder here in Quebec, and yes, we breed specifically for that.
It takes a long time here in Canada to breed bees. Typically, if you are a queen breeder, you would use artificial insemination and you would be able to ramp up the process. As commercial beekeepers, we use an open mating system whereby we choose hives that have drones with traits that we like, and we make queen cells from hives that we think would be good. They seem to survive winter well, are not too mean and produced a lot of honey last year. We make queen cells from them. When they hatch out, we make sure that they go and mate with drones from that bee location over there. We get one season, so it's a long, drawn-out process.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Kody Blois
Thank you.
We're going to have to leave it at that. I gave a bit of extra time.
Mr. Guzman, are you hearing me?
Can you hear me?
Great, okay—
Professor, Canadian Association of Professional Apiculturists
I can. I hear you in English.
Liberal
Bloc
Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay Bloc Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Guzman, the committee has heard a number of beekeepers, in particular this past Monday. They told us that a lot of queen bees were imported to Quebec and Canada. Correct me if I am wrong.
Does importing foreign queens and drones risk altering the genetics of our local bees, which are adapted to our climate?
Professor, Canadian Association of Professional Apiculturists
Yes, if bees develop in a particular environment, they are more adapted to that particular environment. If we raise bees here in Canada, they will be more adapted to our conditions. If bees are imported from other regions of the world and raised in those regions of the world, they will be adapted to those regions of the world, so what's important is that we import bees from locations that have similar conditions to ours.
However, I have to also say there is genetic plasticity in bees, so bees that are raised in a particular environment can adapt to another environment, but it's just a proportion of them.
Bloc
Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay Bloc Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC
In that case, why not produce our own bees here?
Are there barriers to doing that?
At present, are we seeing a lack of will, resources or training for that purpose, given the real risk of importing varroa at the same time as the bees that are ordered by beekeepers as well as the costs of importing?
Why could we not simply expand the production of queens and become autonomous?
How would that not benefit us?
Professor, Canadian Association of Professional Apiculturists
I'm totally in favour of that option of being self-sustainable. I'm totally in favour of promoting the strengthening of our bee breeding industry.
There are obstacles, of course, that we must consider. We have a short season for queen breeding here in Canada compared to the U.S. or other countries. We can produce fewer queens here than beekeepers in more temperate climate regions can produce, because we cannot work all year long, so that limits the number of queens that we can produce.
Also, when we produce queens here, it happens to be late in the season and then many beekeepers don't want those queens, so what we need to develop is new technology to overwinter those queens that were produced in one particular year to be used the following year. However, we don't have that technology in place and it has to be developed.
We also need to develop more efficient methods of nucleus colony production to be self-sufficient.
Bloc
Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay Bloc Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC
Since I have only 45 seconds left, I'm going to go back to Mr. Westendorp, whose answer was that there was this kind of training in British Columbia.
I'm going to ask the question I asked before in a different way: how does that amount to unbelievable added value? We might well hope it would snowball, but how is having adequate training a model to follow?
Provincial Apiculturist, Government of British Columbia
I don't know how to answer that question exactly other than to tie into what Dr. Guzman just mentioned. The difficulty that we have, since the border was closed to the import of bees from the United States, which was occurring in 1987, is that since that time, 35 years later, we still do not have a very large increase in the ability of British Columbia beekeepers to produce stock sufficient to meet the requirements in the prairie provinces. There are some excellent producers, but they are not sufficient to produce that number, regardless of the training these beekeepers have.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Kody Blois
Okay, we're going to leave it at that. I'm going to have to take a little bit of time off your second round because we went overtime.
Colleagues, I'm going to turn to Mr. Barlow. Normally, it would be for five minutes. I'm going to ask you to do that good work in four, if you can, so we can keep this thing on track.
Conservative
John Barlow Conservative Foothills, AB
Thanks, Mr. Chair. I'll do my best.
To Mr. Greidanus and Mr. Olthof, the Conservative members wrote a letter to Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food more than a year ago asking her a couple of very succinct things. One was to do another risk assessment of importing bees from the United States, and another to continue to invest in research and technology, and also for her to bring up this issue at the next provincial-territorial ministerial meeting.
In more than a year, we still have not had any response from the minister as to why a new risk assessment couldn't be done. We certainly understand, as you have all articulated, the important role played by these pollinators not only in the bee industry but also certainly for every commodity that we grow.
I'm assuming that your groups have made a similar request of the minister. Have you had a response, and what was that response?
Past President, Alberta Beekeepers Commission
I'll take that one.
It goes back to my comment about the ineffectiveness of the CFIA, as it stands right now, in not having a bee expert in house, not willing to meet with industry and not communicating what is going on. We just recently got a reply that they would not communicate with us because of the lawsuit. It's unacceptable. These are time-sensitive issues and we're getting a non-answer.
Conservative
Conservative
Past President, Alberta Beekeepers Commission
No, and I have no faith that it will get done before this lawsuit goes through—zero.
Conservative
John Barlow Conservative Foothills, AB
Okay. Just on the same wavelength then, I'll go to Mr. van Westendorp.
You mentioned that the last time there was a risk assessment was 2018. What were the reasons—
Provincial Apiculturist, Government of British Columbia
No, it was 2013.
Conservative
John Barlow Conservative Foothills, AB
Okay, thank you. It was 2013.
Were the reasons that the border was not open? Were there still some concern with some of the viruses or pests that could be brought across? In your opinion, with the mitigating factors that have now been addressed today or changes in protocols, is another risk assessment worthwhile?
Provincial Apiculturist, Government of British Columbia
Absolutely, a lot of things can change in 10 years. The 2013 risk assessment was not universally supported by everyone, and I'm not talking here from a commercial perspective; I'm talking here from a scientific assessment. Some of these arguments that were raised were somewhat moot. For example, it was identified that the resistant American foulbrood disease was a serious threat. Ironically, we in British Columbia—and I'm proud of it—confirmed the presence of resistant American foulbrood disease 16 years prior in 1997. Even then, the risk assessment was not entirely universally supported.