BALDUR, Man. — Sitting on the deck of his trailer and looking out over his acreage, Bill Lockhart makes it clear that he doesn’t have a quarrel with sunflower growers. In fact, Lockhart, a full-time apiarist in south-central Manitoba, said beekeepers and sunflower growers need each other.
If you prevented bees from getting to the sunflower heads you’d get almost no seeds, said Lockhart, who manages 2,500 hives with his two brothers and two nephews around Baldur.
“(But) if you leave it exposed to bees… you’ll get a seed set of 46 to 86 percent…. We’re dependent on growers and growers are dependent on bee pollinators.”
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Having set a co-operative tone for the conversation, Lockhart said members of the Manitoba Beekeepers Association (MBA) are concerned about sunflower growers who apply insecticides every summer, regardless of whether the crop needs protection.
“In other words, let’s not spray (sunflowers) unless they need spraying,” said Lockhart, a MBA director.
The MBA and National Sunflower Association are now cooperating to limit insecticide spraying to protect bees. The concern of Manitoba beekeepers is a microcosm of a larger issue in North America, said Jeff Pettis, the head bee scientist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Since 2007, a third of the hives in the U.S. and Canada have failed to survive the winter, which is more than double the historical winter losses at North American apiaries.
The sudden, widespread decline in bee numbers forced American entomologists to search for answers to the mysterious phenomenon known as Colony Collapse Disorder.
Now, after years of research, there is an emerging body of evidence that pesticides have sub-lethal effects on bees, making them more susceptible to disease, reducing their life span and hindering their ability to navigate.
Pettis said agricultural policy makers will have to find a balance between protecting bees and protecting crops.
“We need to look at restricting the use (of pesticides) on certain crops… (where) we are causing more harm than the benefit to the growing of the crop,” said Pettis. “But you are going to get growers pitted against honeybee keepers…. You will hear more and more about it.”
