NBBA president Paul Vautour told the CBC last week that New Brunswick’s beekeeping industry has experienced winter losses close to $1 million. The government’s recent pledge of $100,000 in aid to beekeepers “doesn’t come close” to meeting the need.
“To buy a package of bees now is about $200 a package, that’s just to buy the bees to put them in the box, so at $200 dollars a package, you can say I lost about $34,000 myself and I’m just a small commercial beekeeper,” Vautour said.
“There are much larger ones than me, some with 800 hives, some with 1,500 hives, so their losses are much bigger than mine.”
The provincial compensation money will help some producers to buy some honeybees for this year, but Vautour points out that just finding enough bees may be a challenge, with all of North America suffering unusual losses.
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