Under the cover of dark, dozens of people gathered in a Sechelt parking lot to await the arrival of a special international shipment.
For the second year in a row, the Sunshine Coast Beekeepers Association (SCBA) has boosted its members’ hives by arranging to import hundreds of thousands of honeybees from New Zealand as a group. Along with the club from Powell River, they purchased $25,000 worth of bees in 100 units.
On Wednesday evening, March 2, the many insects finally met their new keepers after the long journey. Each of the 100 units holds about 14,000 bees, meaning the Sunshine Coast is now home to about 1,400,000 more honeybees than last week.
Steve Clifford, the association’s president, said now is the time of year to get honeybees for a good early start. First, the hives must accept their queen. It will take 21 days for the eggs she lays to develop, hatch, and replenish the hive after the difficult winter season.
“So the first three weeks are slow, but then they come ahead and they really can surprise you,” Clifford says, especially since the queen can lay 2,000 eggs per day. “This is the start of what we call the build-up period, and it’s very important for them to build population so they can produce honey.”
Honey production is the ultimate goal, but these honeybees also act as pollinators for the local environment. While their impact on native bees is up for debate, Clifford said he’s not sure the honeybee presence bothers them, especially considering their flower fidelity.
“We know that the value of pollination that the bees produce is A: incalculable, and B: worth far more than the value of honey and wax that gets produced.”
The club chooses to import from New Zealand for three reasons: Two kinds of parasites and the Africanized bee that have worked their way through the Americas.
The club is also looking for feral honeybee hives, Clifford said. The wild hives died when the parastic mites appeared in North America, but it seems they’re now taking a hold again. Clifford said they hope to recover the wild colonies and breed the stocks to create resistance to the mites.
Last year’s shipment of bees from New Zealand was complicated by COVID-19 cancelling flights. A different aircraft was used then, which didn’t accommodate as many bees as Canada was hoping to receive. Clifford believes the bees may have overheated during the 2021 journey.
“When these bees are in these packages, they're quite fragile. They can't get too hot. They can't get too cold,” Clifford said. But the bees that made it through had a successful year on the Coast. The record-breaking heat “hit the blackberry bloom square-on,” resulting in plenty of flowers and nectar – and three or four years’ worth of honey production in one season.
The interest in beekeeping is also blossoming on the Coast. There are approximately 70 members in the Sunshine Coast Beekeepers Association, and the club is continuing to grow. There are three or four commercial-size producers on the Coast, and the rest are hobbyists, Clifford said. For those interested in beekeeping, Clifford leads workshops at the club’s site in the Sunshine Coast Botanical Garden on Mason Road in Sechelt, passing on his 49 years of industry experience. (He’s also the Sunshine Coast rep to the BC Honey Producers Association and the president of the BC Bee Breeders Association.)
For the new import, the honeybees will become more and more active as the temperatures warm up. Currently, not too many of them fly in the cooler pre-spring temperatures.
When asked if bees could get jet lag, Clifford said they’re likely glad the long journey is over.
