Now that domestic bees can be brought onto Vancouver Island, beekeepers are fretting that mainland bee diseases will infiltrate their colonies and destroy what's left of an already-threatened industry.
"No bees, no pollination. We're at a crossroads," said Robert Liptrot, owner of Tugwell Creek Honey Farm, 50 kilometres west of Victoria. "We have to determine if the European honeybee will survive as a major pollinator."
On Wednesday, Mr. Liptrot will speak at an island beekeepers rally at the B.C. Legislature, to denounce the government's policy reversal announced in May.
"By lifting the quarantine and allowing bee imports, we've opened Pandora's box on the island. There's all sorts of potential for the spread of disease," he said. "This is the single worst decision in the history of B.C. agriculture for food security."
Diseases or parasites not found on Vancouver Island, such as the small hive beetle or European foulbrood, could be carried by island-bound bees from Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, according to Mr. Liptrot.
Vancouver Island's quarantine was put in place in 1987 to protect island bees from mainland diseases and to foster a unique Island bee-breeding industry.
When the ban was in effect, signs on Vancouver Island and at B.C. ferry terminals in effect told people to buzz off if they were bringing mainland bees onto Vancouver Island.
Now, Prairie bees can be imported via frames inside hives, allowing for easy, mandatory inspection. But inside those frames, diseases lurk in the honeycomb.
Even before the ban was lifted, the 2009-10 season was the worst-ever for Vancouver Island beekeepers. Losses that averaged about 85 per cent left the industry "shattered," said Mr. Liptrot, who lost 65 per cent of his bees.
Stan Reist, president of the B.C. Honey Producers Association, put 400 colonies (each averaging about 25,000 bees) to bed for the winter. Sixty colonies survived.
It hasn't been determined what caused the record losses, but 2010's cold, damp spring and the Varroa destructor mite and Nosema cerena parasite were likely factors, said Mr. Liptrot, an entomologist who began beekeeping 47 years ago in Vancouver when he was eight.
Foreign bees, most often from Australia, New Zealand, Chile and Hawaii, have landed on the island to replenish decimated stocks for several years. And this year was no different. To be ready for the April start of pollination season, island beekeepers imported bees by special permit from New Zealand.
In February, 1,800 packages, each containing about 6,000 bees, were imported for distribution throughout the island at a cost of about $135 per package, Mr. Reist said from Nanaimo.
But while provincial apiculturist Paul van Westendorp said the safest thing is not to import bees from anywhere, the ban on Canadian bees was not justified.
Island bees are no different than the Mainland version and in fact have the same diseases, he said.
After requests from Victoria-based commercial honey-producer, Babe's Honey Farm, the Ministry of Agriculture lifted the ban so that beekeepers can choose where their bees come from, Mr. van Westendorp said.
"Much of the issue on the island is driven by emotion because they're on an island. If they would have maintained total isolation by not importing bees from anywhere, they could have cultivated a unique Vancouver Island bee," he said.
Instead, island apiarists chose to use varied methods, including importing Southern Hemisphere bees, to manage disease.
But it didn't work, as proven by this year's losses, he said.
Mr. Liptrot believes that Vancouver Island could have become Canada's leading bee producer with more government support. "We should have been considered a geographically separate area for the betterment of beekeeping," he said.
Special to The Globe and Mail