Agriculture committee  No, I'm talking about the fall of 2020.

Agriculture committee  The August queens are the best.

Agriculture committee  Are you talking about the effects that climate change can have on varroa?

Agriculture committee  Yes, there are consequences. It is probably one of the many factors that have caused the losses we have suffered, which amount to 50 per cent, a record number. The previous fall had been incredible. You must remember: It was 25 degrees Celsius in December.

Agriculture committee  We had an incredible fall, but those weeks of heat allowed the varroa to reproduce. The population of varroa in a hive doubled or tripled every two or three weeks. If there is only one varroa in the hive, there are only two after a while, but when there are 1,000, near the end of the season, it's explosive.

Agriculture committee  Yes.

Agriculture committee  I recommend self-sufficiency in Canadian beekeeping, which also includes disease management.

Agriculture committee  We have not been in touch with McGill University, but I know there are researchers there who are already doing research in the field of beekeeping. I would like to have their contact information and get in touch with them right away.

Agriculture committee  No, it started in 2019 at the Centre de recherche en sciences animales de Deschambault, the CRSAD, with the publication of Andrée Rousseau's article. My research project is the third in Quebec. If I am not mistaken, it is also underway in Alberta. Our results are extremely promising.

Agriculture committee  I'm going to try to answer you, although pollination is not my specialty. In the case of blueberries, which are probably the most remote right now, the trip can be done in 12 hours. However, if I am not mistaken, the breaks that truck drivers have to take present a problem. Taking breaks during long trips is not possible for beekeepers: if we stop and the sun starts to rise, the bees will take flight and we will lose them.

Agriculture committee  I would like to add that it can become a problem. One of the recommendations I make, to encourage Canadian self-sufficiency, is to simplify trade in queen bees and nucleus colonies between provinces. However, when you are transporting bees from one province to another, it takes longer than 12 hours and you are facing exactly the problem you describe.

Agriculture committee  It's the same problem everywhere in Canada. We can get them from Australia, Ukraine, Chili and New Zealand, actually. However, the bees all have their own problems that are harmful to the genetics we are trying to establish, one way or another, in Canada.

Agriculture committee  I'm not sure I understood your question.

Agriculture committee  Yes, there has been a lot of work on selection in Quebec. They have done some research also on bees that would actually be resistant or tolerant of varroa. We are not there yet—that's for sure. That's why I was talking a little bit earlier about other ways to treat them, because the industry has been keeping some of the homologations of some products up on their arms to save them.

Agriculture committee  Queen bee production businesses are continuing to grow year by year. New beekeepers are also trying to start producing queen bees. Producing them is as simple as it can be complicated. You start with an egg, you graft it, and you get the royal cell. The queen mates in flight, hence the challenge with importing foreign genetics.