Province turned down request from the beekeepers' association to close border to imported bees
By Elizabeth McMillan, CBC News

A team of people from the beekeeping and wild blueberry industries will be travelling to Ontario this spring to inspect bee hives in hopes of preventing the spread of a beetle that interferes with honey crops.

Earlier this year, the province turned down a request from the Nova Scotia Beekeepers Association to close the border to ban imported bees due to the small hive beetle, which burrows in hives and can ferment honey if it isn't immediately harvested.

"Now we're just working and doing everything we can to ensure they don't enter the province," said Lauren Park, the association's president.

"It's a really tough thing to say I'm 100 per cent confident. The beetles seem to, anywhere they are in the world, they seem to kind of spread regardless of what people are doing."

By Elizabeth McMillan, CBC News

The organization representing wild blueberry growers in Nova Scotia says profit margins are expected to be so low that growers need as many bees as possible to pollinate crops this spring.

Peter Rideout, executive director of the Wild Blueberry Producers Association of Nova Scotia, says continuing to import bees from Ontario is necessary because there are not enough local hives.

"Right now there's a gap and that gap is around 5,000 hives during the pollination season," he said.

"Honey bees for pollination is the single most important thing you can do to increase the commercial yields of wild blueberries."

Nova Scotia's Minister of Agriculture Keith Colwell has said new measures to import bees from Ontario are necessary to balance the needs of the blueberry and bee industries.

Yields 'decreased'

Rideout says last year producers received about 50 cents a pound for wild blueberries.

"That's a pretty marginal price and the margins were pretty tight, if those yields were correspondingly decreased by not having sufficient pollination then that would make the profit margin even tighter or perhaps negative," he said Monday.

Blueberry growers are renting the 5,000 hives from beekeepers in Ontario and the colonies will be imported to Nova Scotia for a few weeks during the spring bloom, which is expected to happen the end of May and the first two weeks of June this year.

The province says it is sending an inspection team — made up of local beekeepers and blueberry growers — to Ontario to examine the individual hives before they're shipped to ensure they're not infested with the small hive beetle.

In 2015 there were:
· A total of 400 registered beekeepers
· Of which 114 were new entrants to the industry that year. There was a similar number of new entrants in 2014 and some people are still trying to get hives.
· 252 beekeepers were registered with active hives
· And 35 beekeepers have reached commercial status (greater than 50 colonies).
· 25,334 colonies were operated in the summer
· 23,789 were used for pollination, predominantly lowbush blueberry

· 152 beekeepers reported to harvest a honey crop
· 8,123 colonies were used to produce honey (some colonies are used for both honey production and pollination...which is why the numbers don't add up 23,789 +8,123 does not equal: 25,334.
· The total honey crop was 410,000lbs (based on voluntary information)
· 152,188 lbs were sold in bulk (based on voluntary information)
· 115,434 lbs were sold retail (based on voluntary information)

By: Lynn Curwin, Truro Daily News.  Published December 29, 2015

What do honeybees do in winter?

If you said hibernate, you're wrong.

While bumblebees and wasps do hibernate, honeybees are busy trying to ensure their hives survive the colder months.

Tony Phillips, who has had bees since 1974, says the insects beat the cold by forming a cluster, which could contain 20,000 individual bees. They go to the centre in shifts and while there they eat honey from the combs on which they are perched, using their energy to flex their wing muscles and create heat. On a sub zero-day the temperature at the centre of the cluster could reach 35 C. The queen is protected at the innermost area.

Modern beekeeping requires beekeepers to keep track of a lot of information to meet current regulations for bee biosecurity and food safety. One of the challenges they face is sorting through extensive documents that they are sometimes overwhelming and confusing. The Canadian Beekeepers' Practical Handbook to Bee Biosecurity and Food Safety is a new tool to help beekeepers keep track of the information needed to meet current regulations. It is available on the Canadian Honey Council (CHC) website (www.honeycouncil.ca on the left hand panel under "Beekeepers' Handbook).