Research farm abuzz with bee info
BY ERIKA SHERK – Special to Sun Media
This was a party to which the guest of honour was, frankly, not invited. There was a good reason for this: nobody wants to mingle with a small buzzing party-goer that just might sting them.
However, at The 56th Annual Beekeepers’ Field Day at the Beaverlodge Research Farm last Friday, the uninvited bees could still take heart in their popularity: They were the reason people had travelled from across the Peace Country to attend.
The crowd that gathered in the exhibition shed was a mix of large commercial beekeepers, small hobby enthusiasts, researchers, inspectors and of course, those who just love honey.
“It’s important to get together,” said Dr. Stephen Pernal, apiary research scientist at the research farm and organizer of the event. “It’s a way to disseminate research, it keeps the beekeepers on top of things ... it’s a more challenging operation than it was a generation ago.”
Those challenges were the hot topics discussed at the event. Mites and diseases have been making it harder and harder for beekeepers to keep their bees healthy and producing honey. The past three years, beekeepers have been losing around 30% of their bees each winter.
“It’s much more complicated to be a beekeeper,” Pernal said. “The challenge is for people like me to come up with answers to those problems.”
Gilbert Wolfe said he was interested in hearing about the research done on combating varroa mites – one of the major present-day scourges of North American beekeepers. On the major operations side of things, Wolfe owns Honey Bunny Inc., a company producing honey-based products such as barbecue sauce and lip balms out of Guy, Alberta. They outsource their honey from beekeepers in the area, with about 5,000 local hives servicing their factory.
On the smaller side of things, Don Albright was taking the opportunity to spend the day in a bee-obsessed environment. He inherited eight hives when his sons left home, leaving their former 4-H projects to his care.
“They know way more about beekeeping than I do, so if I have a question I go to them,” he chuckled. “I’m just doing this as a sideline, more or less.”
Albright sells the honey privately.
Small operations such as these are able to do this, sell their honey locally, but it gets harder to find a market close to home when there are mass amounts of honey to sell.
Northern Alberta is a high-yielding area for honeybees, said Pernal in an interview, and the population isn’t big enough to consume that much. A colony here could produce 200 pounds of honey in a season.
“That is just astounding to other parts of the world,” he added.
Bee Maid honey is a co-op of honey producers in Alberta, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan – basically, the answer to the small local market problem. It sells 18-20 million pounds of Western Canadian honey every year: All over North America as well as in Europe, Japan and the Middle East. The co-op’s CEO, Guy Chartier, was at the event, chatting with the beekeepers.
Honey is the ultimate natural product, said Chartier, as it needs very little processing.
“All we do is warm it up and filter it,” said Chartier. “It’s 100% pure and natural, we don’t add anything, just bottle it.”
And fortunately for the beekeepers, the Peace Country has an edge when it comes to marketing its honey internationally.
“This area here is world famous for the honey it produces, it’s the best area in the world for it,” said Dennis vanEngelsdorp, Acting State Apiarist for Pennsylvania, and the keynote speaker at the event.
“The Peace produces the whitest honey in the world,” said Wolfe. “It’s got the highest concentration of clover fields.”
The long days of summer make a difference as well, as the bees work as long as it is light outside. They know the seasons, according to Pernal, so they work very hard to stockpile honey, creating a large volume for beekeepers to harvest. In warmer climates, the bees would be working at an easier pace and eating their honey as they went.
The concentrated season of the area requires some beekeepers to bring in help from overseas. Mary Ann and Santi Baldo of the Philippines have been beekeeping in Canada for three years. It was their third time attending the event.
“Here it’s big commercial business, back home it’s backyard beekeeping,” said Santi. “(In the Philippines) it’s an extra income for the family: If you’re working, the income is not enough. Also, it’s honey for the family,” he smiled.
It was good to have an information day, Santi said, to learn more about the specifics of Northern Alberta beekeeping for the work they do in Peace River.
For, despite the myriad advantages of being a Peace Country producer, beekeeping is agriculture, after all. It is at the mercy of the elements, the pests, diseases and of course, the market.
Still, like the farming faithful, beekeepers keep at it because they love what they do.
“Opening a hive of bees is one of the most wonderful, exciting, relaxing things you could do,” said vanEngelsdorp. To see thousands of bees working together is a beautiful thing, he said, “and they’re all making liquid gold.”
Article ID# 1640527
posted by igorotbeekeeper @ 6:34 PM
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