Bee winter mortality 'worst in years' say Ontario beekeepers

Guy Anderson has the unenviable task of cleaning out thousands of dead bees from his multitude of hives this spring.

“We had 60 per cent loss here. In Ontario, it was anywhere from 50-95 per cent. Some even lost 100 per cent,” says the long time beekeeper, based in Kincardine.

It’s a common theme across Canada with beekeepers reporting one of the worst over winter mortality rates, ever.

“We can think of three things. A little pesticide contamination, bad weather, and mite buildup,” says Anderson.

Whatever the cause, Anderson is out hundreds of thousands of dollars.

At $400 a hive, and 750 hives with no bees, he’s out over $300,000 in hive loss alone. And hundreds of hives will sit in storage because he has no bees to put in them.

“On top of that, you don’t get your honey crop, you lose your pollination, because you don’t have enough bees to send. You don’t have your wax crop. You don’t have enough bees to collect pollen or honeycomb. We had contracts for all of those things, and that just disappeared,” he says.

Bee ‘dead outs’ at Guy Anderson’s bee farm in Kincardine, Ont. on April 20, 2022. (Scott Miller/CTV London)

Anderson already has some queen bees on order from California and Chile, but airline COVID restrictions will mean most Canadian beekeepers will be left in the lurch.

“The challenge is going to be replacing these bees coming into the spring, and into the harvest season, this summer,” says Nathan Wendell, with the Saskatchewan Beekeepers Development Commission.

Beekeepers will have to rely on each other to stay afloat, says Wendell.

“We’re going to do our best to try and get a number of guys back on their feet or try and help them out, however we can,” says Simon Lalonde, a Canadian beekeeper who says he’ll share what bees he can this spring.

Anderson says despite losing over 750 of their 1,500 hives, they’ll try and do the same, and survive as best they can.

“Lots of hobbyists had 10 hives and lost them all, or small commercial that had 200 hives, and lost 190. That’s just depressing, so in perspective, we’re not doing too bad,” he says.

Anderson says they’ll likely be downsizing their honey business, and hope that the diversification of their Hive n Hoe Country Store in Kincardine keeps them going until they can build back up their bee business.

Bee ‘dead outs’ at Guy Anderson’s bee farm in Kincardine, Ont. on April 20, 2022. (Scott Miller/CTV London)