Agriculture committee  That's way out-of-the-box thinking, but it would be a great way to go. It currently doesn't occur, although I think PMRA has lined up with the international...to a much better degree.

Agriculture committee  I think Kevin is being a little humble, or his memory is slipping. He's been to Chile and has imported Chilean queens into Canada. One of their goals was to ship Canadian stock to Chile so they could breed it there and ship it back to Canada. Their season would let them do that in March and April, when you can't do it in this area.

Agriculture committee  It's a five-year project, being funded through Growing Forward.

Agriculture committee  In our experience, that's not the way we need to go. We're seeing no ill effects. For me to comment on a situation that I'm not terribly familiar with probably wouldn't be fair. That's the best I can do. Sorry.

Agriculture committee  I'll take a shot at that, and then Kevin can fill in the blanks. Yes, that is a huge issue. We're behind the eight ball all the time. I asked that question of the cattle industry: what's going to be their next antidote to infectious diseases or the various fly treatments? Well, they say the veterinary college looks at it and then they talk to the pesticide industry.

Agriculture committee  It's in my area, but I don't really have a whole lot of details. It has been open, I believe, for a year and a half or two years, and it's fully staffed. It's funded for five years, so they can have a chance to get programs off the ground. The instrumentation and the staff there are capable of doing any of the work that the bee industry would require.

Agriculture committee  It's amazing that they don't, really. They come from Australia and New Zealand. It's 14 or 15 hours by plane. I've never used that resource myself, but I did help a neighbour this spring. Those bees look great. There is a downside to them in that they're coming from an area that's just going into winter, so they're largely old bees.

Agriculture committee  There are regions from which honeybees have just disappeared. It's too bad because it's a glorious honey-producing area, but it's a terrible honeybee wintering area. That's more or less north of the Peace River. There are thousands and thousands of acres of canola and mixed farming in that area.

Agriculture committee  What he missed was the dust issue you brought up. Just so the committee is very clear about this, canola seed is small and round. It rolls gently through the seeders, and it doesn't require a talc. The corn is irregular, larger and coarser, so apparently the talc and graphite is used to help it flow through the system.

Agriculture committee  We do raise queens in western Canada. The way the weather falls in Canada, there really isn't an area that can get an early jump on the spring. Even in the Okanagan, you might get a 10-day jump on queen rearing. For queen rearing you need 75-degree weather and lots of drone population for proper mating, and it all seems to fall within a 7- to 10-day period when that starts in any given area.

Agriculture committee  From the research side, it is fairly obvious. But I'd just like to reiterate what Kevin suggested about the role of the federal government in research. We access industry and other stakeholders in the pollination field for research dollars. But it's for grain breeding and variety breeding and that sort of thing.

Agriculture committee  There are a million unanswered questions. These bugs are so convoluted and interesting that every day when you get to the bee yard it's, “Can this be happening?” Then there are the subtle things that you don't see that are going on, and that's the area where we're going to need some substantive work.

Agriculture committee  Thank you, committee, for inviting us to your meeting today and giving us an opportunity to share the story of beekeeping in western Canada. That's how I'll approach it. In our particular operation, we are based in the Peace River district, which is not a great place for a honeybee to spend the winter.