research update
Customized for the coast
Bee breeder hopes to produce pollinators that are resistant to cold, damp—andmites. By Judie Steeves
A
project on Vancouver Island to raise cold-hardy bee stock that is resistant to varroa mites is
being conducted by Brenda Jager of the B.C. Bee Breeders, with funding assistance from the Investment Agriculture Foundation of B.C. Jager has been raising bees for 20
years, but is a smaller-scale beekeeper, with about 150 colonies. She sells mail order bees within the province, and says she’s been working for years on improving her stock to be better suited to the damp cold that is typical winter and spring weather on the coast. It’s important to spread out the
good stock, she noted. Jager brings in bee stock from
other parts of Canada to see how well they overwinter here and how resistant they are to mites. With Vancouver Island’s mild winters, bees get the earliest start in spring of any climatic region in Canada, she notes. “We could become the queen bee producers for the province.”
MCHALE: DEUTZ FAHRKUHN PHONE: 604.826.3281 FAX: 604.826.0705
British Columbia Berry Grower • Fall 2013 15 Many beekeepers bring in package
bees from countries such as New Zealand. Although packaged bees from New Zealand are healthy, they’re not acclimatized to the wet weather found in coastal B.C., she says. “They’re from a drier region. I find
they don’t fly during drizzly or cloudy days,” she reports. They are great bees under the right conditions, but if the weather is typical spring weather for the coast, they are waiting for a sunny day— which never comes, she explains. After many years of breeding, Jager
says she has come up with bees that eat less honey over winter and overwinter well. Jager has brought in some bees from Ontario and found them to be
good honey producers; they do go out to forage, even in drizzly weather. The bees she raises tend to be
darker ones that come from Austria and Germany, where the weather is not so warm, she says. She gets good feedback from beekeepers who have used the stock and is distributing it around the island and selling queen bees to apiaries in the Fraser Valley. This year, she is partnering with beekeepers in the Comox area and north of Prince George to do assessments of the bees’ performance. Jager worked as a research technician with Liz Huxter in the Grand Forks area on bee breeding projects too.
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