SASKATOON – There’s a bad buzz in the land of canola and honey this year.
Across Western Canada the benefits of high honey prices are beyond the reach of most producers, who are stuck with a poor crop in a year that could have been a bonanza.
“For many bee people it’s close to a disaster,” said Yves Garez, a Nipawin, Sask., producer in the honey heartland of Saskatchewan. “We can’t get a good crop and maybe the good price will go too.”
Garez said many Saskatchewan producers will only collect about 100 pounds of honey from each colony this year, a far cry from the 160 lb. average last year.
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Bee experts in Manitoba, Alberta and B.C.’s Peace River region say producers will be struggling to get an average crop this year. They say the long, brutally cold winter crippled bee colonies. In many, half the bees overwintering died before spring.
Then came a late, cold spring which stopped the bees from building their numbers before the traditional busy bee days of July, when most honey production occurs.
July was cold and wet, stealing many potentially good days from the bees, who in inclement weather stay home and buzz quietly to themselves.
But there is some hope for a better honey harvest, bee watchers say.
“If we get a good open fall and the second cut of hay is left out there because farmers are too busy with their cereal crops, an average crop could be realized,” said Roy Sterling, of Alberta Honey Producers Co-operative in Spruce Grove, Alta.
Provincial agrologist Doug Coulter said late seeding has provided bees with some late blooming hay crops, but honey producers can’t count on those crops being left in the field to flower.
If producers decide it is too late to get a good seed crop from red clover or alfalfa, they might just cut it down.
“If they do that, it ends any hope of getting any more honey,” Coulter said.
Many producers were happy to sell their honey for 80 cents per pound last August, in light of 1994 prices of 65 cents per pound, but were chagrined to see honey prices jump to 95 cents in November and then rise to $1.25 per pound in January. The price has stayed strong this summer with reports that American honey production is low.
“It’s so frustrating to see that price and not getting a honey crop,” Coulter said. “If you don’t have the honey, you don’t get the money.”
