The University of Guelph started construction this week of the Honey Bee Research Centre.
The $16-million facility will include up to 200 hives, a research laboratory, a shop for honey and hive products, pollinator gardens and walking tours plus a classroom where honey bee enthusiasts can learn how to become beekeepers.
The 15,000-square-foot facility will replace the current honey bee research centre – a 1950s bungalow with a research lab in the bedroom and honey extracting station in the basement.
“This innovative, state-of-the-art facility will change how we manage hives and do research,” said John Cranfield, associate dean at the school of food, agriculture and resource economics department.
“But the new facility will also allow us to scale up education programs, for anyone interested in how to manage hives, he said.
Honey bees and other pollinators are essential to food production and honey production adds $278-million to the economy, with $44.6-million in exports.
Their total contribution amounts to $7-billion to the Canadian economy annually, according to a Statistics Canada report from 2021. The economic contribution is likely to be higher, as these estimates cannot account for the value added by natural pollinators.
However, since 2007 colonies (which hold between 20,000 and 80,000 bees) have dropped 35 per cent annually in North America and most of Europe.
In the winter of 2021 Canada experienced its largest honey bee colony loss in 20 years. Alberta alone lost 51 per cent of its colonies, according to a survey from the Canadian Association of Professional Apiculturists.
“Bees can only tolerate so many problems at once,” said Paul Kelly, research and apiary manager at the Honey Bee Research Centre.
“Climate doesn’t help, neither does exposure to pesticides. These compound the issues, coupling them together, and that’s what overwhelms the species.”
But the centre has identified varroa mites as the chief culprit.
It also discovered that honey bees with higher levels of a gene that compels them to scratch more vigorously are better at removing mites from their bodies. This is because mites flatten and tuck themselves between segments of the bees’ abdomen.
Currently, only 15 to 20 per cent of honey bees are able to remove the mites by scratching so researchers are breeding honey bees that are better scratchers, which will increase the population of bees with greater resistance to the mites.
So far, the breeding program has been implemented in Ontario, with hopes more provinces will follow suit.
The new facilities are needed to continue this kind of research. For example, the new centre will include several rooms for incubating bees.
These rooms will allow researchers to conduct more controlled tests and extensive monitoring of bee behaviour and health.
The bigger building will also be key to expanding collaboration with other researchers and, through classrooms and tours, spreading awareness about the challenges faced by honey bees, university officials said.
