A Saskatchewan beekeeper is appealing for an end to the ban on imports of packaged honeybees from the continental United States, suggesting it is destroying his livelihood.
John Hilbert and his family have 3,500 honeybee colonies, which makes them one of the largest beekeeping operations in Saskatchewan.
Hilbert said winter bee losses on his Humboldt operation this year were at least 60 percent. To replenish its colonies, the family bought 1,500 bee packages from Australia, which cost $200,000.
Hilbert said if it were not for the ban, he could have imported packaged bees from California for as little as $50,000 and with better prospects that they would thrive.
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The ban on imports of packaged bees and queens from the mainland U.S., which has been in place since 1987 in Western Canada and since 1985 in the East, was established to help prevent the spread of unwanted disease and parasites.
However, Hilbert said many problems the ban was intended to keep out have eventually crept north across the border anyway and now are present in parts of Canada to varying degrees.
He suggested the lack of access to packaged bees from mainland U.S. is financially more damaging to his beekeeping operation than disease or parasite problems.
“The whole situation is just not bearable anymore,” Hilbert said.
“I’m saying let’s open that border up and get on with business.”
Debate over the closed border isn’t new, but seems to be gradually gaining intensity in Western Canada.
Heather Clay, national co-ordinator for the Canadian Honey Council, said only a “very small group” of beekeepers in Western Canada is in favour of opening the border. Within that group are a number of commercial beekeepers in Saskat-chewan and Alberta.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency recently assessed the risks of opening the border. Comment from industry stakeholders is being sought before a report is made final.
“There are wants and perceived needs by people all over the place on this issue,” said Brian Jamieson, a senior veterinary officer at the CFIA.
The CFIA assessment reviewed parasite, disease and other concerns that exist in the mainland U.S. bee population and attempted to rate the risks those problems could present to Canada.
The risk was rated as low in relation to Africanized honey bees and the small hive beetle, moderate in terms of spreading treatment-resistant American foulbrood disease and high when it came to treatment-resistant varroa mites.
Clay considered the report fair and thorough and said it again points to the need to keep the border closed. The majority of delegates to the Canadian Honey Council’s convention last year in Niagara Falls, Ont., voted in favour of the closed border.
There is, however, discussion about possibly establishing protocols to allow the import of queen bees from mainland U.S.
