FARM TO FOOD
Launched on September 18, 2025, the “Farm to Food” podcast is broadcast on a bi-weekly basis to increase coverage of the Chateauguay Valley’s largest economic sector - agriculture - and, of course, everyone eats everyday (at least we hope so!) so there is always a lot of interest in all things agri-food.
Whether you're a farmer, a foodie, or simply curious about where your meals come from, Farm to Food connects you to the full journey — from soil to supper. Each episode features down-to-earth conversations with local farmers, agri-food innovators, and global experts on everything from organic farming to processing, sustainability, and food security.
Recorded at the historic Ormstown Fairgrounds, the show offers real insights into Quebec’s rural communities and the people who keep us well fed. Plus, stay updated with timely agri-news and local food stories that matter.
For producers, processors, and curious eaters alike — Farm to Food is your guide to understanding how our food systems work, who makes them thrive, and why it all matters. From bumble bees and microdistilleries to the dairy industry, cash cropping, and extreme weather, we’ll explore it all.
Listen, learn, and support local – because farming isn't just for farmers — it's for everyone who eats!
FARM TO FOOD
14. Bees & Pollination
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In this episode of the Farm to Food podcast, we explore the essential role bees and pollinators play in agriculture across Quebec and why their future matters to farmers, food production, and biodiversity.
From honeybees working vast crop fields to native pollinators thriving in wild spaces, we look at how pollination supports everything from berries and apples to vegetables and seed production. We also examine the growing pressures facing bee populations, including climate change, habitat loss, parasites, disease, and pesticide exposure.
The episode dives into the ongoing debate around agricultural pesticides, particularly neonicotinoids, and how farmers are balancing crop protection with pollinator health.
We also explore the unique challenges of beekeeping in rural Quebec: harsh winters, varroa mites, unpredictable weather, declining forage diversity, and the economics of maintaining healthy hives in a changing agricultural landscape.
Jackie Rourke visited with our own Farmer Phil Quinn at his farm in L’Île-Perrot , where they talked about his passion for bees and how he got started
Sarah Rennie speaks with:
- Greg Edwards, who runs an organic blueberry farm on Covey Hill in Havelock QC, about honeybees and native bees and the challenges bee keeping;
- Amélie Morin, a University of Laval researcher on bee nutrition and riparian strips.
- Sascha MacIntosh-Hobson, an agronomist, on the regulations around pesticides.
- Holly Dressel, author, writer/researcher for David Suzuki. Holly spoke about the impact that pesticides are having on bee populations, and how farmers continue to use pesticides.
Callan Forrester speaks with Brandon Borland, a Chateauguay Valley Regional High School teacher who is working with students on a project to teach students about raising bees.
Thank you for listening to this episode of the Farm to Food podcast.
We’d like to thank our sponsors for helping bring this initiative to life: Desjardins, the Livestock Breeders’ Association and Quinn Farm in Notre-Dame-de-l’Île-Perrot for their promotional support.
We also wish to thank the Community Media Strategic Support Fund and the Government of Canada for their financial support for this project, as well as the Bourses d’initiatives en entrepreneuriat collectif for their contribution toward equipping the podcast studio.
This program is made possible thanks to the dedicated work of the volunteer directors on the board of Châteauguay Valley Community Information Services (CVCIS), a non-profit social enterprise with charitable status. We would love your support to help keep this podcast going.
Donations can be made at farmtofood.ca, and we can issue tax receipts for donations over $25.
Farm to Food Podcast Credits:
Hugh Maynard – Host
Jackie Rourke – Producer
Sarah Rennie – News Editor
Callan Forrester – Reporter
Stacey Pennington – Audio Production
Dianna Chycki, sales & marketing
…and of course, Farmer Phil — who’s farm-tastic!
Well, hello again, my farmtastic friends, Farmer Phil here, introducing this week's podcast. Hmm. We're out in the garden again this week. Uh it is that time of year, you know. And right next to the garden is our Asian pear tree. And it's just starting to bloom, and what a stench. I don't know if you've ever smelt Asian pear blooms. They are absolutely horrible. But we noticed, the kids and I, all kinds of different pollinators on there. There must have been four at least seven or eight different pollinators, uh, happy as could be, buzzing away and stealing pollen and bringing it to another flower and taking it back to the hive. And there were wild mason bees there, little emerald green uh bees, and seeing how the the stench of these flowers uh is just so strong, uh, they were also attracting pollinating uh flies. And then we turned our heads to look at the neighbors and took great delight at him on the verge of hyperventilating at the sight of all the dandelions popping up in his lawn. Uh meanwhile, Stephanie takes great pride in a very, very diverse lawn here at home. We've got the white clover, bird's foot, tree foil, we got thyme in there. What a beautiful smell when uh lawn gets cut because of the thyme. So I don't know if you've uh clued in yet, but our this week's subject is all about uh pollinators. And uh they're gonna be interviewing some crazy guy from Il Peru. Uh I think he knows what he's talking about. Yours truly has been interviewed for this week's podcast. But uh before we get to that, we gotta have this beautiful intro music uh played. Enjoy.
SPEAKER_04Welcome to the Farm to Food Podcast. I'm Humaynard, publisher of the Gleaner newspaper, the team that brings you this podcast every two weeks. The Farm to Food Podcast is presented to you by Desjardins and also supported by the Livestock Peters Association and Quinn Farm. The theme of this episode is bees, and not just the insect part, but the important role that bees play in ensuring a wide range of farm products make it onto our tables. Of course, we're talking about pollination, which produces honey but is also essential to the production of many fruits and vegetables. Without bees and bumblebees, many other sorts of wild bees, there are no apples in the fall, and bees have been battling a number of challenges from pesticides to parasites to climate change that pose a threat to their beneficial role in food production. So let's take a deep dive into how bees help feed the world. Regular listeners to our podcast are familiar with farmer Phil Quinn, who opens up each episode with a reflection from his years of working at Quinn Farm on Il Perro. And while we could talk to Phil about any number of subjects, he's particularly passionate and knowledgeable about bees. So our producer, Jackie Rourke, recently paid a visit to Quinn Farm with some grandchildren in tow to talk to Phil about his bees.
Farmer Phil Quinn
SPEAKER_10So, farmer Phil Quinn, your story with bees goes back how far? Like how old were you when you started learning about and working with bees?
SPEAKER_05Oh goodness, dad had bees a few years before I was born. Uh he was at Mac, a technician in the greenhouses there at Mac, and uh, forget the name of the prof who was the entomologist, uh the chief entomologist on campus there. He had a swarm uh up in a tree, and he said to dad, Dad always had a pair of pruners on him, and he says, You and your pruners come with me now. And he had a cardboard box and a ladder, and he said, You're going to take the cardboard box, you're gonna go up there on the ladder, and just cut the branch and shake the bees into the uh into the box. And dad had zero experience with with bees, he was terrified. So then he just fell in love with bees and started learning all about it. And uh first one of the first things he did here on the farm was to plant strawberries and sweet corn and have bees.
SPEAKER_10Is having bees with farmers a new thing or because of the populations kind of diminishing, or have farmers long had bees to ensure that their crops get pollinated?
SPEAKER_05Aaron Powell If you're looking at any kind of fruit production or vegetable production, yes, bees are important to have around. Um and they were pretty well at their lowest in the through the 80s, early 90s. Um pesticides, insecticides particularly were used broad spectrum and they were quite harsh. Um and now we're learning to do a whole lot more integrated pest management and be a whole lot smarter with the products we're using, use more specific products to the insects we're targeting and try and stay away from anything that'll be detrimental to any bees, and we're trying to give a whole lot more habitat to both our bees and indigenous bees that are in our environment. More on that, uh, we have another very passionate entomologist from McGill that comes in every spring and does a headcount on all of the indigenous bees that we have here on the farm or wild bees. And we're over 40 indigenous or native pollinators, aside from our honeybees. Um, the little teeny tiny microscopic wasps that are emerald green. There are mason bees that have their nests in the ground, um, all kinds of pollinators, if you just give them a chance, give them a habitat and stop using insecticides in in an unresponsible way.
SPEAKER_10How hard is it to start having bees? And how much of an expert do you need to be to have bees? Because there's a certain amount of danger involved, is there?
SPEAKER_05Uh, there can be for sure. If if you attempt to uh get into the hive on a on on a day where conditions are not right, you're gonna find out real quick. Um you can lose a pile of money getting into bees. It's quite expensive for the equipment. Uh and and I would highly suggest doing a stage or doing an internship with a beekeeper before getting into bees yourself. There's a lot of mistakes to learn before you and it's cheaper to do it on someone else's dime or or be under the wing of a pro.
SPEAKER_10Because they are somewhat fragile, I would guess, especially with our really um you know extreme weather conditions.
SPEAKER_05Aaron Ross Powell Extreme weather for sure is uh a factor to the diminishing uh populations of bees, um, but more so the the the parasites. Um little there's the um varroa mite, which is a parasitic mite that attaches to the bee's back and sucks the daylights out of it and kills it. Um and then there's another one, the hive beetle that is coming up from the United States. It's um on the in southern Quebec right now and moving north towards us. And then if you're not feeding them properly in the fall to get through winter for sure, that the it's a detriment to them. Lots of mistakes to to be happening.
SPEAKER_10Well, that's interesting because I wanted to talk to you about some of the mistakes and some of the challenges. So can you tell us a bit about like sort of the season of beekeeping? Uh, you're just now, you've just put them out back out in the field. We're in early May. So, what what's sort of the rhythm and the seasons of the beekeeping?
SPEAKER_05Uh yeah, just put them out right now. Well, they came out of cold storage or or uh out of the root cellar, I guess about a month or so ago, a month and a half uh on the first warm days, and uh kept in a sheltered area and they're out in the field now. Uh very important, all of the hives are there a little bit light. Uh, that's what we were doing this morning when we took you guys out. We added a little bit of uh food to the boxes there. We gave them uh a simple syrup. It's a sugar with with water and diluted. Uh very important to keep them fed this time of year because uh the queen is about to start laying. The first pollen is coming in. Uh, Manitoba maples are in full bloom right now. The first dandelions are popping out, and as soon as that queen has pollen, she's gonna start laying. And we have to make sure that they're they're nice and strong and fed. And as soon as they do start laying, it's important to add boxes and make sure that the population doesn't get too too dense in the hive. Otherwise, they'll make a new queen and swarm. You don't want that. We gotta give them room. Unless you want to make a new hive, then you you force a new queen and you pull out the new queen cell and put it into a nuke box and let her develop. And then the honey flow follows right after that. As soon as the first clover comes out, that's when okay, the honey flow is really starting. You're you're talking early to yeah, throughout through all of June. As soon as the flowers really start blooming, that's when that nectar comes in and we gotta add boxes for more honey.
SPEAKER_01Aaron Powell How often do you need to take out the honey and check or like actually bring the honey out? How often do you need to do that?
SPEAKER_05It depends on the honey flow. If it's a very, very dry season, oh, it'll be later in the season, probably yeah, late July through August will be our harvests. Um but if it's an early warm season with lots of water and lots and lots of flowers, we've got to be on top of it. If we see that the population is very, very high, the bees are doing super well, we gotta be adding boxes or swapping boxes out. If they're full of honey, we'll pull them off and give them fresh, uh empty boxes for them to work on.
SPEAKER_10What are some mistakes that people might typically make if they're, you know, trying to house bees? Is that the right term?
SPEAKER_05For sure. Housing bees. Uh number mistake number one is not giving them enough room whenever the season really does kick off. Uh if you kind of neglect, if you got other things going on on the farm, uh, we're busy planting and oh, we forgot to add boxes, and oh, we got a swarm. That means half the population will leave. The old queen uh will will feel far too restrained to uh too much population in the hive, so she'll leave with half the population and leave behind eggs that the worker bees will make into a new queen. And that you're just losing population, you're losing production there when half the population leaves. So it's important to give them more room whenever they need it.
SPEAKER_10And when they leave, they don't just go to the other field, they really go?
SPEAKER_05Oh, it entirely depends. There are scout bees that are that are sent out beforehand uh to scout out possible options for a new home. Usually it'll be uh a hollowed out tree or a cavity in a wall somewhere. Uh but very often on the way to said new location, they'll they'll congregate on a branch, usually up higher, like 10, 20 feet up in a in a tree, uh, and you'll see a big ball of bees um all around the queen protecting her. And that's uh an opportunity to harvest uh a swarm.
SPEAKER_10But that's how the whole story started for your dad.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, that's right, that's right.
SPEAKER_10And any other classic mistakes?
SPEAKER_05Um yeah, for sure. Come late August through September, we have to look at populations of the Varroa mite, that's a parasite uh that will kill the bees. If the populations are high, we have to go in there and treat them uh and give the bees a a fighting chance to survive the winter. If we don't do anything, um that's when the bees, the population just drops too low and they don't survive the winter. Also, very important late season to feed your bees. We're we're stealing all the honey. That's what we want is a sweet honey. Um, but historically, bees harvest that honey for themselves to make it through the winter. We either have to leave a box, a box and a half full of honey for them, or we have to feed them for sure late season, we'll give them a simple syrup. Some of the old timers don't like doing that, they'll they'll prefer to give them proper just leave honey for them. Whereas we take most of the honey, leave them some, and then we feed them come um yeah, through October is when we feed them.
SPEAKER_10And then they're they're put away for the winter in a colder space kept dormant?
SPEAKER_05Either quite literally a cold storage where they're kept at a steady temperature, usually about uh somewhere between four to ten degrees Celsius, depending on how you like it. Uh or a root cellar, where again temperatures are steady. Very important to have them ventilated whenever you do keep them in storage. Uh they need air movement. Uh some of the old timers keep them outside yet. Um but the very the fluctuations in temperature through our modern winters is is hard on them. As soon as they get warm days, they get active and then back down to minus 20. They don't like that.
SPEAKER_10Well, thanks so much for telling us all about bees, Phil.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, that's it for today. Uh time is honey, you know.
SPEAKER_10Okay, thanks so much.
SPEAKER_04Now the Gleaners News editor Sarah Rennie joins us. She has been talking with a collection of people from producers to researchers about different species of bees and the ways farmers are working to protect these important pollinators as well as some of the impacts farming practices can have on bee populations. Welcome, Sarah.
SPEAKER_03Hello.
SPEAKER_04What's up with bees?
SPEAKER_03Uh, there's a lot, actually. It we maybe thought that this was going to be a simple topic, and it turns out that it's quite an in-depth issue, you know, with farmers right now because they need bees as pollinators, and at the same time, you know, they're they're doing some things on their farms that are maybe not the best practices for the the the lives of bees. So it's it's complicated.
SPEAKER_04And so when you talk to farmers, I guess there are two kinds, those who are very reliant on bees and wild insects in general for the pollination of their crops, uh fruits in particular, and those because they're growing other crops that uh are impact the habitat of bees and where they live and how they move around and the sources of food and the flowers and the fruits. So let's uh uh let's start with the with the with the producers who depend on the bees um for getting a a crop onto the branches and then of course into the the the baskets and out to consumers.
SPEAKER_03So I spoke with Greg Edwards, who runs an organic blueberry farm on Covey Hill in Havelock. Um and he's also a brand new beekeeper. So last year was his first year um keeping bees. They started with five hives, and they had two that didn't survive the winter, but they had three that did, and they're very healthy hives. I had a chance to go and visit them yesterday, actually, and watch them open up their hives and meet their bees, those sorts of things. So it was a really interesting experience. Um they had an agronom there as well who was talking about the health of their hives, and uh bees are just incredibly interesting things to watch, really, is what I've I've sort of learned from this uh this podcast
Greg Edwards
SPEAKER_03episode. Greg and I talked specifically about uh the importance of bees for blueberry production and for pollination. And so I'll let you hear a little bit about what he had to say about that.
SPEAKER_07Pollination is really important. First of all, thirty five per 35 to 40 percent of all food depends on pollinators for production, fruit, vegetables, seeds, nuts, all kinds of biodiversity. But thirty-five percent of food depends on pollination. And what does pollination do uh at the absolute opportune time when blossoms at the best for blueberries, apples, um fruit uh size is improved, yield is improved, ripening is improved, shelf life is improved, everything is seed life is improved, and then there are the other aspect of keeping bees, where um birds, wildlife, soil protection, biodiversity, which is a big word today and a huge objective with the the climate change that we're living with and the change of uh agricultural practice, and bees help keep the entire ecosystem up and running.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so they're quite essential then.
SPEAKER_07They're absolutely essential. Absolutely essential. Timing is really important for pollination, for the people who bring bees into their orchards, into their bee yards, when flowers have to be in full bloom, not too early, not too late, and have good sunny warm weather. Bees like warm weather. Like if I went out to my hive our hives right now, I had the temperature here this morning, it beautiful sunshine. Our bees have a southeastern exposure at the entrance, and it is now uh 14, 16 degrees Celsius, the bees will be out. Our bees will not come out of that hive until we reach 12 degrees Celsius.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so it's been a rough spring for them too, then, because it's been a very rough spring.
SPEAKER_07We brought uh bees home on the um 9th of April from um from an apple storage facility and been monitoring them daily, and there have been very few mornings where these guys are out prior to eleven o'clock because it's been too cold.
SPEAKER_03Wow.
SPEAKER_07It's been too cold. Now, yesterday afternoon, at 2 o'clock, they weren't out. At 4 o'clock, they were out.
SPEAKER_03So they've got very good little internal temperature monitoring systems. Oh yes.
SPEAKER_07These guys, they are absolutely amazing. They're absolutely amazing to watch and to see how they operate.
SPEAKER_03Aaron Powell So Greg and I also spoke about the intr interaction between honeybees and native bees, such as bumblebees, and some of the challenges that come with beekeeping, especially now that he's come through his first year and he's looking at expanding uh the number of hives that he has on his farm.
SPEAKER_07Aaron Ross Powell Apple trees like honeybees. Blueberries like honey bees and bumblebees because the flower on a blueberry plant is very long and deep. And some of the worker bees cannot get into them, whereas the bumblebee can. So they will both work together, they become pretty good friends, and they pollinate together.
SPEAKER_03Aaron Powell Wow, you know you hear about that, about bumblebees and honey bees being friends, because they sort of outcompete each other sometimes.
SPEAKER_07Aaron Powell Well, they compete a little, but they the bumblebees will not go to the colony. And when you see them out in the field, they're happily doing their thing. We haven't had any conflict around here that we've that has been noticeable.
SPEAKER_03Aaron Powell Okay. And so the bees that you've brought in are those honeybees?
SPEAKER_07Aaron Ross Powell We have honey our colonies are honeybees. Apis I I don't know if I can say this right. Apis millifera, I think is the biological term.
SPEAKER_03Okay. Are you gonna collect honey as well, or is it just for the bees?
SPEAKER_07We collected we extracted honey last year, and for the first time around, it's quite uh quite an experience. So it is. And uh no shortage of stickiness, uh, but it was great fun. Bees are amazing to watch, they're a society all of their own, and they are uh they're amazing little creatures. Um they require a lot of work, they require a lot of attention, and there's some major and there's some pretty good challenges. But with um I think the number one game that I've found by talking to agronomes and researchers in the B world is to keep on top of the game and not to become too big, um, but stay on top of it. Do those inspections regularly and yeah, keep them healthy. Last summer was difficult. It was very, very dry. Uh so the flower population literally dried up come the first of August. And so there we were watering bees. Never in my life did I ever think that I'd be watering an insect. But we had waterers set up and water we did that every other change water every day, and we managed to get through the season. But these challenges, uh the varroa mite, which is that ugly little parasite, uh pesticides, loss of habitat, climate change where the weather is just up and down like a yo-yo, we all know that. And when we're in drought, you have um huge flower decline.
SPEAKER_03So it's hard to get optimal conditions then.
SPEAKER_07Now I've only been in this a year. I'm I'm just starting year two. So I mean everything was great. Here we we work with uh an agronome, and everything was wonderful here until the severe drought arrived the first of August. But we we managed to pull through.
SPEAKER_03And the bees, they survived the winter okay, they stayed with you?
SPEAKER_07Yeah, we we we had our bees indoors into a controlled climate, and we lost one of five hives. It was a very weak hive as it went in. We had every every belief that we would lose it, and we did. But we're hearing um through the MOPPAC and through our agronome that bee loss was quite high in some parts of the province.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I guess that's that's sort of the other major story with all of this, too, is that as the hives aren't doing as well year after year, it's it's it's just becoming more and more complicated, too.
SPEAKER_07Become more and more difficult. Uh the varroamite is the is the leading leading difficulty. So we have to monitor for the varroamite, you have to treat for the varolamite. We treated three times last year on a routine basis. Uh we did inspection between our agronome and our cells. Uh we didn't find any, but the research says every beehive has a varroamite in it. And the varroamite causes viruses and it does the now what's the proper term? Wing deformed. Wings and so bees don't fly, so there's no foraging. So it becomes a a bit of a difficulty to the varroa mite.
SPEAKER_04So bees in agriculture are facing a number of challenges, as Greg pointed out. Um there's the infestation of the varroa mite. There are other health issues that come from bees obviously don't build hives like we build for them and put them ten in a row. And I think uh one of the things uh there are beekeepers like Greg who who have their own hive so that they can uh manage the situation. There are also beekeepers that have hundreds um of hives that they put on a truck and they move off to an orchard because the person who runs the the farmer that runs the orchard doesn't want to have to deal with managing the bees at the same time. So there are a lot of stresses on a bee from their utility, right? We're in a way imposing those stresses and like with many other uh types of production, maple production, for example, where we've used modern technology to enhance production, we have to be very careful about uh what we do and how we how we do that, and and and it's uh it's learning as we go along. So, what are some of the other challenges, health problems that are um afflicting uh honey bees and therefore their capacity to produce both honey and also to pollinate for the farmers that need it?
SPEAKER_03Well, certainly there's um habitat loss and and certain issues around that as well. So it's just harder. Um but mostly for honey bees, it it really is uh i cold, cold winters, late springs, those sorts of things can cause problems for hives. And and as Greg mentioned, the that mite is is just becoming kind of a nightmare, I think, for a lot of bee producers.
SPEAKER_04So i in Quebec as elsewhere, there are also other pollinators. Um several species of bumblebees are uh very important. Um interesting to note that in uh a lot of greenhouses they use bumblebees, they build little mini hives, little boxes, and the bumblebees pollinate the the tomatoes and the cucumbers and the the green peppers and they're extremely useful even if they don't produce honey. But out in the wild, uh uh the the natural habitat, they're under a lot of stress because uh many of the areas where they exist, there's farming activities going along. And uh the modern practice is not to let wild plants uh pro proliferate, because of course that's weeds and and um uh it costs money to control them, but that's also the habitat for bumblebees and other insects. And so the the flower strips in particular along the edges of fields appear to be a promising solution that can help uh occupy space that would otherwise be um covered with weeds and also then give the bumblebees and other pollinators um some some food and some space to to breathe, provided the right flowers are chosen.
Amélie Morin
SPEAKER_03Mm-hmm. So who would have known that uh you know being nutrition was so important? But I spoke with Emily Morin, who's a doctoral candidate at the University of Laval, who's studying how the choice of flowers influences the diet health and resilience of the uh Bourdon or Bumblebees specifically in Quebec. So she started in this project with her master's degree and she demonstrated that these strips actually attract a greater abundance and diversity of bumblebees. She's now working, they fast tracked her into a PhD actually, and it's allowing her to continue her research on bumblebee nutrition and health. So I asked her, you know, basically just to try to describe her research and here's some of what she had to say.
SPEAKER_00I love to talk about the bees and my project. Um so yeah, I started with a master project uh on the flower strips that was uh that were already on the farms in Monterugie. Uh and we found that the the flower strips are working, so we have more bumblebees and more species, so it was really interesting. Uh and then I I continued to my PhD because the the producers were wondering what they should sown. So that's the question that everyone asked me. So, which flowers are the best for the bee for the bees? Um, so that's how my PhD project started. Um so I have three three different parts. Um the first part is to collect the pollen on the flowers. Um then we analyze the nutritional values of this pollen so we we can know which flowers have a lot of proteins, uh, which one have more vitamins, so things like that. And that can help us uh obviously knows uh to know the values of these flowers. So that's the the first part. Um the second part is uh about the endangered bumblebee species. So we catch them and we uh make them pass a series of uh health tests. Um so the first one is the behavior. We look at their behavior to know if it's normal, is it uh changed. Uh we look also at their health. So we we take feces, so we uh collect them and we check if they have a pathogen. Um and the last test is to collect the pollen from their pollen basket, so on their uh on their leg. Uh and same thing we can know does the did this bumblebee collect uh high protein uh flower pollen or things like that. So we can know uh their health, uh if they're lacking some nutrients, uh things like that, and we can compare to uh species bumblebee species that are doing okay right now. So there's about 25 bumblebee species in Quebec? Yeah, about 25. So yeah, we we have a lot of different bumblebees, and that does not account for all of our solitary uh indigenous bees. So we have uh tons of species, and they're all important to pollinate our cultures. So yeah, we we specifically work on bumblebees um because they well, they're bigger, obviously. So we can capture them with a net. We can uh cool them down a little bit on ice because they're more able to uh to survive on the ice because they're bigger and they have a lot of hair. Um, and then we can do these tests and release them, uh, which could not right now be possible for all our uh small bees that are difficult to see in the flower strips. Um and yeah, the bumblebees have uh endangered loss, so we have funding for them. Uh but obviously all the bees are important.
SPEAKER_03Um but then there's a difference between a bumblebee and a honey bee, for example, that because uh all honeybees are imported. Is that that's the case?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, honey bees, of course, are super important too, good pollinators, but they are not uh indigenous. And unfortunately they are good, very good competitive species. They can uh they can infer a decline in other of our bees. Uh they can also uh transfer pathogens. So for us, we are really focusing on the conservation of indigenous bees.
SPEAKER_03So Emily's work is incredibly interesting, and it mainly focuses on the nutritional quality of flowers, hopefully be able to guide farmers in planting and growing healthy nutritional flower shrubs, trees to help native bees populations near their fields. So I asked her about how they determine which flowers are best, how they determine the nutritional value, those sorts of things. And we got into a bit of an interesting conversation about whether or not there's something called a fast food flower. And there are fast food flowers. Dandelions, for example.
SPEAKER_04I got lots of those.
SPEAKER_03Yep. Apparently, dandelions are just like candy. They're just sugar and fat. So we'll let her explain that.
SPEAKER_00So right now it's it's really about attractiveness. So we say we see a bumblebee on a flower and we're like, wow, that's a great flower. We should sewn that one. Uh so right now we're thinking, okay, but um does this really respond to the needs of the bumblebees? So so that's one step further to just make sure that bumblebees have what they need to have a good uh reproductions and a good health in general.
SPEAKER_03Okay, and so all flowers then are not the same. Some have more protein and some some are less healthy?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, exactly, like uh human food. Uh and it's it's really complicated, like the human food. Uh you need the fat. So uh it's not you cannot just say, oh, and reduce the fat, you need a little bit of fat. So it's all the same complexness. Uh, but yeah, exactly. Some flowers have a lot of proteins, so you can compare them to, I don't know, like a steak or a tofu. Something really rich in proteins. Uh so that's really good for uh the beginning of the season when they lay eggs. So the eggs really need uh that the these proteins to have a good reproduction. And then uh you have some flowers that can help uh reduce pathogens. So um yeah, these flowers uh you can see the the pathogens uh leaves the body earlier or it can help fight. So I don't know, like in an anti biotics or things like that for us, the humans. So these are really nice for a bumblebee species or uh some sites that are more um attacked by pathogens, for example. And yeah, we're trying to find the flowers that have a good uh ratios of uh all of these. Obviously, there's not one flower, but like for human health, we're seeing that like uh the having flowers rich in proteins, having flowers rich in in vitamins, so like the fruits or the veggies, and having flowers that helps with the pathens, so something uh optimized and a good mix.
SPEAKER_03So then if there are like healthy flowers, are there also sort of maybe less healthy flowers or like fast food flowers? If we're gonna go with that metaphor of human food as well.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, exactly. There are some that we think are more um fast food flowers. So for instance, uh from the beginning, the our indigenous flowers are the best ones. So the these flowers have evolved with our bees from the past uh 10,000 of years, so they they answer their needs really well. So all of the non-indigenous ones are the ones that we think, oh, maybe some of them will be more fast food flowers. Um and like I said, it's always complex, so I don't want to point to flowers and say these ones are really bad, but for instance, the uh dandelion, uh that's a popular one for the beginning of the seasons, but uh bumble bees fed only 100% on dandelion, uh could not uh produce eggs and reproduce because uh the lack of proteins. Um, so if you combine dandelion with uh, for instance, right now it's the maples that are flowering, bees are really rich in proteins, and the dandelion could uh help support, but dandelion alone uh could not uh help uh queens to produce eggs. So it could be somewhat of uh fast food flowers. Uh so the ones that are really lacking proteins are really rich in fat. Uh so you say, yeah, well, one flower rich in fat in a day, that's that's okay. But if there's only that, then uh it's gonna be more difficult, yeah. Okay. So how do you go about getting your samples then? Yeah, well, that's really difficult. So I gotta say, bees are really more efficient than humans to collect pollen. Uh so sometimes we use uh the bumblebee, so we we see uh for instance a culture uh full flowering uh apples, for example, so we'll we'll use the bees present that already have pollen. Uh but otherwise, more often we use little tools super small, and we try to make the little pollen grain uh in a little tube. So uh yeah, we developed a method that we can see the nutrients uh with just a little quantity of pollen, so that helps too.
SPEAKER_03So you must be talking like microscopic amounts then.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, less than less than a gram. So it takes a full day minimum or a few days uh when the plant is uh really at its peak of flowering. So yeah, it's a challenge.
SPEAKER_03Do you have any preliminary results yet?
SPEAKER_00Um yeah, at this point we we have a few analyses that are done. So of course we will have more recommendations, and the the producers will be able to choose uh which one they they like the best. Um so right now we were really impressed by the trees and the shrubs, so flowering shrubs, obviously. Uh so they have the a ton of proteins in them. Uh so like I said, the maple, saleks, uh, and all the little shrubs that we know. So when the producer are doing uh windbreaks, we try and uh talk to them into planting some species for the bees, also, so the windbreaks can help also bees. Um but otherwise, in more uh indigenous plants, we have the um goldenrod um asters. Also uh the sunflowers are really good for pathogens. So right now they are the one that reduces the most the pathogens. Um of course the annual sunflower is harder to use for the producers. Um so we are trying to find uh non-annual sunflower is low, so sunflower is uh perennial that could stay in the cultures and uh help. Yeah, so I think that would be my recommendations for now. And like fruit trees as well, or yeah, exactly. They're interesting in terms of proteins as well. So yeah, in terms of uh categories, I would say that trees and shrubs, uh, that flowers are really rich in proteins. And then you have the flower family of the asteracea. So it's uh a family. So if you're unsure, so these ones uh right now we think are more for the pathogens. So if you know on your farms you have more of uh trees and you have no asterachia, you could you could uh try and uh do a mix yourself and help the bees in this way. Okay.
SPEAKER_03That's very, very interesting. It's it's a it's a really different way of sort of thinking about just well, even just the sort of biodynamics that are existing on a farm. When you think about the the bees and how important they are. Um what about people who just have regular backyards? This would apply to them as well.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, exactly. So we're trying to see that at what do you already have? So for the farms, we have sometimes big superficies or of some thing that already flowers, so let's use that and uh or the same thing in the backyards or uh in your neighborhood, so what is already there and what is could be lacking, so what nutrients could be lacking and what flower could complete that uh instead of saying what what you have there is not helpful or is not enough or let's use what we have already and then just complete that.
SPEAKER_03Emily's work is all very, very relevant to area farmers. So I asked her what led her to this research subject, and she explained that she used to actually be afraid of spiders and insects in the garden, and and it wasn't really the bees that foos first drew her attention to this research subject at all. It was flowers. So I'll let her talk about that a little bit, and then I asked more specifically about how the farmers are actually involved in her research.
SPEAKER_00What interested me first was the flowers. So I I love flowers, I have flowers at home. So I dive in this study, not knowing and it's a master's project, it's two years, so I was like, that's that's gonna be nice, so little flowers. And and now I'm really invested in the bees and trying to protect them. So so I would say that's also what I hope to achieve. I think we can really make a difference for these bees. So they they live like under one kilometer radius. So when a farmer does something, it we it really helps the community. So you don't have to help do something at the Quebec scale or something like that. You can really do something at your own scale. Uh, and I think we can really help the endangered species and try and save them. So that's really what we are trying to achieve. And I'm the one talking right now, but it's really the the producers and the farmers that are doing the hard work. Uh, and my goal is only to answer the questions that they ask me uh to my best and try to to yeah, with the science, uh help them uh do the best when they want to to help. So yeah, that's it.
SPEAKER_03Now I think it's important to note that too, that it is farmers and producers that they care a lot about the bees because of course they they need them.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, exactly. They they are doing the the hard work and they are the one that started this project with their questions. So we are really only here to so it's a project that was really uh created with them, and uh we we make changes in the project with them. Uh so when they ask, oh, this flower is this flower good, well we go and collect the pollen of this flower. We don't collect the pollen of uh any flowers, so we really adapt the science to answer the the questions they are asking, and and I think that really helps after the results to be implemented uh fast and uh at a larger scale. So yeah, that's how we we see the the science really to to help.
SPEAKER_04So who knew about dandelions being candy for for bees? I won't cut my loan anymore. But uh I'm not sure my wife will let me get away with that one. But there are other challenges to bees and bumblebees uh from farming activities, in particular the use of pesticides, insecticides, which are designed for um eliminating aphids and beetles and other uh types of insects that destroy the crop and are very useful when they are used, but they are also indiscriminate in some cases. And one of the ones that's been in the news a lot uh with relation to bees is the neonicotoids, which we abbreviate as neonics because it's much easier to say. And uh those have been quite controversial. They're very uh useful to farmers, they've been banned in the EU. Um, there's a lot of pros and cons on their use and how they do in fact impact uh insects like bees. Um so what's the realities of the use of pesticides um and their impacts on bees?
SPEAKER_03That's a really uh vast subject as well. You know, the use of pesticides and uh the way that pesticides have been used traditionally um without really having any awareness of what they would do in the larger environments. They're incredibly effective at what they do.
Sascha MacIntosh-Hobson
SPEAKER_03So I spoke with Sasha McIntosh Hobson, who's an agronomist with the Uniag Cooperative. He works largely with field crops and his experience with pesticides, the regulations around these treatments and their impacts on native bee species as well as honeybees. And we talked about different kinds of pesticides, but we decided to focus on neonics at first, um, because these have largely been associated with having devastating impacts on bee populations. And so here's some of what he had to say about these pesticides.
SPEAKER_08Neonicotinoids is a class of insecticide that targets um essentially the nervous system uh of select insects, and some are more susceptible than others, of course. But um it was pretty potent at what it did in in controlling pest uh species in our ag fields. And this was developed in the eighties and really put started putting being put into practice in the nineties and flourishing really in the 2000s, uh if you want a timeline. And it's an interesting development because at the time neonics were pretty much heralded as being um a great innovation not only uh economically for for the farmer in terms of an easy way, because these were this was an insecticide coating a seed that they were simply sowing into their fields. So there was an economic incentive for for the input and for the protection of the crop. But there was also ironically enough an environmental impact, a positive environmental impact as well, because at that time it was eliminating the large use of other insecticide treatments, which were often sprays, being applied to these fields at the time. So it's funny because yeah, when this came out, this was it was quite a nice innovation in general, pushing AG forward in in a number of facets. And like anything though, it's extremely widespread like it became in the 2000s and almost ubiquitously used for seed treatments, of course, we start to see macro effects and off-target um and collateral impacts that we never foresaw to begin with. So this is actually and and it's good because when we see these macro effects and these off target impacts, it pushes the industry to to continue improving, right? And to continue getting better. And we saw with Neonix in particular, like an impact targeting bees, which obviously were never the target for for these products. But once we saw the impact that that was having on foraging bees, you know, it became a problem that we needed to address. And we have since. So so now neonics, it's been a number of years now that they've pretty much disappeared from field crop production because of regulations that we put into place where it was essentially banned, except for a prescription from an agronomist, similar to atrazine. So you don't really see neonics on seeds anymore. You do, however, still have insecticide-truded seeds, but these are uh diamine insecticide treatments, which are much less toxic for bees. So this was a good push forward to address that problem. And of course, in Quebec, we're pushing that even further because now even the diamide insecticide class of insecticide treatments on on seed is essentially banned without a prescription from an agronomist.
SPEAKER_03Aaron Powell So neonics aren't really being applied at this point broadly in the sort in the Chateau Valley, but in Quebec in general.
SPEAKER_08Yeah, exactly. So like if you look at a corn seed or a soybean seed um with an insecticide treatment on it, you'll see it's a diamine, most likely diamine insecticide treatment. So not a neonicotinoid uh seed treatment.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_08And this the impact on bees is is much different. Far less acute severity than what the neonics had. But again, this is another input that we're gonna see a drastic reduction in because of the regulations that we're putting in place to limit their use. And really an insecticide seed treatment has a very short lifespan. You know, it's within a month that treatment has essentially been dispersed in its little environment and is no longer useful. So the whole idea is whether it's a fungicide you're treating on the seed, whether it's an insecticide you're treating on the seed, you're really controlling the target pest for the very early onset of that plant's life, for the little plantlet's life. And once it becomes a young plant, once it's a basically a month into the plant's life, that treatment is no longer there, really, or useful, and uh it takes over on its own. So it's really a very specific timeline. And in Quebec, why I think it's a generally a good push to further regulate and further limit um the use of an input, because we need to make sure that no matter, especially if there is an environmental impact on that input, it has to be justified in some sense. And early insect damage in crops in general across Quebec is very specific. I wouldn't say we could say it's rare, um, but in certain situations it's common, but in most situations it's not common. So you really only need to be preventative in with your insecticide treatments in very specific cases. And it shouldn't it certainly shouldn't be ubiquitously used across all circumstances, right? And I think this is what the Quebec government is trying to implement in its regulation to ensure that it's really only being used when it's needed. And it's not just being used systemically.
SPEAKER_03So Sasha and I also talked about bees and some of the issues facing bees when it comes to agriculture and how people can make a difference in terms of helping bee populations on the farm and in their own backyard. I asked him, you know, about bees and honeybees and why they're so susceptible to um pesticide use.
SPEAKER_08Aaron Ross Powell That's another very interesting topic because we have I think in Quebec, southern Quebec alone, we have over 300 different bee species, right? And um there's of course the honeybees that we all know of, which are managed colonels, these aren't wild species. And um I'm sure they were probably setting the alarm off early, because usually it's an economic impact that starts the alarm and that gets the social awareness um going. But really, so so if we look at say honey bees, which are managed colonies, they are steady to increase in these populations, right? If there's a bad winter, if oh uh something happens in a given season, might you might see an impact on the population. And I would say pesticide exposure is not their big worry. There is a certain mite called the Vero uhroad destructor, uh, which is the big impact that these guys contend with for their bee production. But uh the vast majority of species, of course, are wild bee species, right? And they are facing, of course, a number of problems. You know, there's habitat loss, there's climate change impacting their environment, um, and of course, there's always intensive agriculture or or insecticide use in agriculture that can impact them as well. But it's very interesting to look at these species as well, uh, apart from managed colonies. And we do see that there's some groups that are on the decline, there's some groups that are steady, you know, there's some groups of bees that have really adapted to urban environments. But it's definitely these wild species that we need to be thinking about more so if we're looking at ecological preservation and and what we can do to mitigate impacts that we're having. And there's a variety of different that have been put into place, and that people can, of course, uh adhere to to try to push that forward as well.
SPEAKER_03So is there anything that you do then um you know as an agronomist, or is there anything that you're doing with to work with farmers to try to protect bees?
SPEAKER_08Aaron Ross Powell What we can all do, and and I think the regulations that we're all putting into place progressively over time. I think the key is for everybody to understand why those regulations are put into place and and to keep that in mind. And if we think about bees in particular, I mean it's really when these bees are foraging that they're they're more susceptible, right? And I guess it's to be conscious that okay, bees are foraging early to midday um for the most part. You know, by late afternoon they're pretty much done foraging. Um it's getting cooler, nectar has been depleted a little bit, it's or is it becoming too hot, is it becoming too windy? So things things that will detract from foraging, right? Um it's difficult because spring, a field is already tricky. You need can't be too windy, can't be too hot, it can't be depending on the product, of course, right? But the good thing is, is you know, early in the morning there's usually a do, so it's not ideal. You know, you want things to kind of dry up a little bit, be, you know, the conditions are a little bit better. So I mean, and certain sprays that we know can impact foraging bees. It will be on the label to say, okay, listen, we this product needs to be sprayed uh later in the afternoon, in the evening, when it's cool, bees aren't foraging. Um and this is legally bound, of course. Anything that's found on a label is legally bound. And it's just for everybody to be aware of the limitations of a given product, to be aware of the environment we're in. And I think everybody is, uh for the most part, any producer is well aware of what uh this product is intended to use for, when what the restrictions are, right? And I think it's it's a combination of that in rules put into place like the banning of neonics without a prescription or insecticides without a prescription. And I think these are gonna continue to limit the impact we're having on native species.
SPEAKER_04So we've looked at somebody who's doing some research. We've talked to somebody who's working directly with farmers on the use of pesticides. Now there's also living in our area is Holly Dressel, who's an environmental activist on many fronts and has written for The Gleaner. And um, she's got some interesting things to say about uh the use of pesticides and the impact on on bees and pollination.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, Holly is always uh an incredible person to speak to because she just has a vast i incredible experience and a lot of information that she can share. She's written a couple of books with David Suzuki. She does write occasionally for the gleaner, and one of the articles she wrote in 2020 focused on a honey producer in Saint-Stanislav Zekostka who lost his hives due to pesticide drift.
Holly Dressel
SPEAKER_03So I spoke with Holly about this story, which doesn't seem to have been resolved as of yet, and the use of pesticides just in general and their impacts on bees, and um she had a lot to say, but here's a little snippet.
SPEAKER_02I've written three books, um four books really, but three books with David Suzuki about the environment. And I ended up doing a lot of research on biodiversity and toxics and things like that. And then I did a lot more were other work outside work as well, you know. And you learn a lot when you're forced to do serious research. Some of these um takes a year of research to do a book at least. And the films we did for the nature things would take two or three years. So at the end of that, you feel like you know something about biodiversity a bit anyway. And one of the things I learned, of course, is how desperately we need pollinators in this world, and how important they are to farmers. And the irony of the farmers being the major source of the death of pollinators, one of the major sources, there are others, obviously. So even three years, four years ago, we had a local farmer, Joel La Berge in Saint-Stanis-Lois, who was the major honey producer in this area, one of them. And he lost millions of bees one day to somebody, just what's called spray drift, somebody spraying their field nearby. Now, what the government will tell you is that pesticides that are uh lethal to pollinators like bees are very heavily regulated. They aren't really. Um they there are rules about how to use them, but there's absolutely no oversight whether the rules are followed, and worst of all, there's no punishment for not following them. So nobody's looking and nobody will get mad at you if you do it. So really farmers are not, you know, obligated to pay any attention to these rules. They get this long thing telling them how to use the spray, and most of them don't pay any attention. If they have a neighbor who can who's got bees and who tells them, My God, please don't spray when it's windy, and in fact, that is against the law. Um, it is against the law to spray when uh ideally you're supposed to spray at night. There are other rules, and uh the government will point to these wonderful rules. But if nobody is enforcing them and nobody's being punished for ignoring them, they're not really rules. They are more like suggestions. And when people are in a hurry, and often farmers will job out the actual spray. So they'll they'll get a company to come in. Well, that guy's got five farms to do in one day or whatever, one week, and he's in a hurry and he's got one more farm in his list, and the wind kicks up, you think he's not gonna spray? He's gonna spray, and and the bees next door are all going to die. And what that happens besides the fact that the crops won't get pollinated properly, it also means that the honey keepers, you know, lose heart and give up. And most of them have gone out of business. Um Joel was one of the survivors, uh Joel Labers, who was trying, and he actually, when this happened to him, he actually took it to court. I don't know what happened, that was three years ago. I don't know what happened with this lawsuit, but he took it to court and he didn't want to sue his neighbor. He wanted to sue the company. But the way the law system works, he had to sue his neighbor for negligence, basically. So that's what he did. And the idea was not that he would get any money or anything, you'd say, oh, yeah, he's doing it for the money. Are you kidding? You know, um, any settlement would not have made up for his loss for starts and the misery and the trouble of a court case and having a lawyer and all that all, you know, and and the chances of him losing very high, etc. He did it for his son who wanted to keep bees as well. He did it for everybody who's ever wanted to keep bees. He loved doing it. He said he wanted there to be honey in Quebec. And without somebody calling people to account, but you know, all this goes down to you, okay, we should have better, more stringent rules, and everything's gets more and more complicated and and and and there's more and more rules for the farmers to follow, and life gets heavier and more difficult. And it doesn't have to be. To me, I mean, the one thing I learned about biodiversity and chemical toxins is that if a chemical substance will kill an insect, it will hurt you. If a heavy metal will kill soil organisms, it will hurt you. We're all in this together. We are exactly like the other lifeforms on this planet, and particularly the ones that are closest to us, like say mammals. It's like, why is it more important to use these chemicals than to be safe and not use them? And a lot of farmers will say, well, you know, like I won't get the yields. Well, yeah, you will will get different kinds of yields. What typically happens in organic growers, especially bigger areas where there's large amounts of organic growers, say in India and places like that, where they can't afford a lot of chemicals, what typically happens is they have more crops and more diversity in their field. So they can have a lot of things going on in their field. They can be raising bees. If they're a rice farmer, they can have fish in the rice patties and so on. And they end up that all that has to be figured out when you say, well, the rice yield is not as big as it would be if they'd used these chemicals that would kill the fish. Yeah, but they didn't get any protein, right? Well, we don't care about protein. We just care about, you know, yield per hectare. Well, we shouldn't, obviously, because the whole point of growing rice or whatever is food. So if you're killing one form of food to get another form of food, it's not a net gain. And all of this became more and more clear as you do research on all this stuff, is is that we have to look at the bigger picture, not the smaller one.
SPEAKER_03I also asked Holly what exactly the pesticides do to bees, as well as how quickly these pesticides can appear on the market and how little we know about their different components and how they break down. I asked her directly about what something like a neonic would do to a bee before asking about the future and how farmers continue to use pesticides.
SPEAKER_02So basically it it either kills them outright the way a nerve poison would us and um or any creature that takes it, or it messes up their nervous system, which means they can go home and fly home and seem normal, but they are confused. They can no longer maybe find the flowers, maybe they can't find their way back to the hive, maybe they don't know how to feed the young anymore. So there's both immediate and long-term effects. Well, imagine how evil it is to do that to something as lovely as a honey bee. Why would you do that? Well, because I'll get more yield per hectare in the farm next door. That's not a good enough reason, and I think most people would agree that that has to be rethought. And one of the problems with things like neonics when you bring them out is is they only look at the thing that they were intended to do. In other words, does it kill pests in this particular crop? It never goes, well, what are the side effects?
SPEAKER_03Yeah. And neonics are definitely something that just like they sort of just came out and came on to the market.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, they came very fast. Um they do this typically with all these things when they can, because the newer a thing is, the less likely it is to have been studied by anybody except the company that makes it. And in fact, all of our safety d data on Neonics and ICAMB on the rest of them comes from the actual companies that make it and have a vested interest in telling you it's okay. So there is nobody actually studying them. And even then we know how dangerous they are. Even even the people who are making money off selling them to you will admit that they're dangerous. So just imagine how dangerous they are if we got a look at it and we didn't have a vested interest in telling you, well, it's probably not too bad. So neonics did arrive very quickly on the scene anyway. I think I think they were discovered quite a while ago. But uh the the mass use of them on this level and and in this way. And you know, like coated seed, that's another horrible thing that is just accepted now. Do not buy coated seeds because they don't have to. One of the things uh about all these chemicals, including neonics, is we don't know anything about what's called the surfacids. And the other chemicals that they're used that are designed to make them, say, oily, so they'll spread and stick to the leaf and kill the b or that is designed to make them sprayable or whatever. They are not obligated to test those to even tell you what they are. So we don't know what they they may be what's actually wrecking everything. It may be the non-active ingredients, and we don't even know we they're not obligated to test them or pay attention to them at all. We also don't know what these things do in concert with other things. And like the thing about the world is it's it's complex and everything interacts with everything else. So you put something out in your garden, and lo and behold, you know, uh something next to it dies because you've done something to disturb its soil or whatever. It's the same thing. These things have repercussions that you cannot imagine because of the complexity of the way the world intertwines. So if you throw uh one chemical out, much less five, it's going to have obviously multiple effects, and the effects are are just going to keep growing through the ecosystem. So these are not studied at all.
SPEAKER_04Up next, our reporter, Callan Forrester, speaks with Brandon Borland, a teacher at the Shatagee Valley High School, who is working with students on a very special project to raise bees and make honey at the high school. They spoke about the origins of the project and why getting students and young people particularly involved is an important part of taking care of bees and local pollinators.
Brandon Borland
SPEAKER_09So today I'm here with Brandon. Thank you so much for being here today. Um, we're here to talk a little bit about the project you have going on at CVR at the local high school. If you could start just by telling me a little bit about this beekeeping project that you have at C VR and uh sort of how that got started.
SPEAKER_06Originally, I think the idea was we were going to uh we were gonna try and turn our campus into like a particularly eco-friendly one, lean into the fact that we had such a giant campus. Uh and we had a a coordinator. She um got a grant and uh we got our first beehive. And then together, well, actually, she already knew kind of how to take care of bees together. She, the science department, and I uh learned how to take care of a hive kind of from start to finish. Uh that was a group that would have graduated in 2023, 2024. And then more grants have come our way. One in particular has to do with food. And so we kind of doubled down um and replaced a hive that we had lost. It has been difficult in some ways, uh, because you know, the nature of a of an apiary, like a uh hive. There are some restrictions when it comes to working with kids and like allergens like that. We have to keep the hive on the roof of our school. That's really the only way we've come to get around most of the problems of well, will somebody vandalize the hive or is it a danger to anyone? But y yeah, it we have some ideas to make it um I guess more interactive in the future uh funding. Um actually a lot of kids still don't know we have it. But like those classes that uh do actually uh know about the whole hive? They've seen us harvest honey, they've uh they've learned about uh about bees. Uh it is a cool thing to have. And it's really good for the pollination uh around the campus.
SPEAKER_09You know, you mentioned that this is a great learning tool for the kids, plus it's good for the environment around the school. CBR is lucky that it has such a big campus. For you, what are what are some of the benefits that you've seen of having this sort of hands-on experience for the students?
SPEAKER_06We learn about things like, for example, invasive species and then native species and then non-native species, and then the kind of Venn diagram around that. Adults are always surprised to learn that honeybees are not native at all to North America. They have a really hard time here. And then you get a lot of kids that are just kind of amazed that we've got an insect, an animalia here that isn't native, but it's just so good for uh pollination in the environment.
SPEAKER_09So you're actually producing the honey. Are the kids able to sample the honey? Are you selling it? What do you what goes on with this honey?
SPEAKER_06Yeah. Uh we're being really good uh beekeepers and really bad at the same time. By that I mean we're being good beekeepers. The last time we had a large amount of honey, such a surplus that we took from the school, but we gave the honey to the staff uh on staff appreciation day because it just seemed right. Uh we everybody got a hundred milliliter thing of honey.
SPEAKER_09I think you're very lucky at C VR that there, like I said, there is that big campus, so you're able to have projects like this. I think that's uh a really unique experience that not a lot of high schools offer.
SPEAKER_06We did offer some honey at a at a recent farmers market. Uh it was some that was left over, and trying to get a greenhouse club started uh that that takes care of the bees all the time.
SPEAKER_09Wow. Well, it sounds like you have a lot of sort of green initiatives going on at C VR right now. I'm sure students are really excited about that. Thank you so much for being here today.
SPEAKER_04So a lot of a lot of information to take in, and um some of it uh not so good. But I think the upside of of this discussion is that we become much more aware of the impact of agriculture and when we use technology, um, and particularly when it impacts on those things that are not directly agriculture, but on the side. So when we talk about uh honey bees and some of the difficulties, um the the knowledge that we've acquired is is really helping to adjust the management practices, the applications, uh, when when it's done, uh taking into into consideration that when you use some of this technology, there will be unintended consequences. So please manage that as best you can. As well as what I find uh very interesting, and we'll delve into this at a later episode, is about the the the use of new technologies which will significantly reduce the use of broadcast uh pesticides, right, where they're sprayed across a whole field and therefore have a larger impact, and very much targeted using computers and AI to reduce the you know almost the spot applications, and that's going to be a very interesting evolution and see how that works. But we still have to deal with the climate. This spring is a good example where it's drawn out, it's cool, um, it's cloudy. There's not a lot for the bees to forage, right? Go out and find the flowers and to pollinate, so they're sitting waiting in their hives, and that has an impact on their health. So we we hope that it brightens up and we hope that that is then gonna give us some more honey.
SPEAKER_03Because at the end of at the end of all of this, what what what we really like is is that sweet stuff. It's it's pretty uh incredible. It's also incredibly healthy. And so it's some certainly something that we we definitely want to see continuing to happen. And it's fantastic to see just across the Shatgay Valley, all the different ways in which we are producing honey from you know, our schools to, you know, smaller hives to larger productions. You know, I think there's a a good future for our bees.
SPEAKER_04And as you're traveling, listeners are traveling around, when you see a little row of boxes off to the side next to a row of trees, there's a windbreak, those are those are beehives and they've been placed there for the protective uh location. And of course then the bees will um fly out from there well over a kilometer away from those hives to go out and forage. And so that's why it's very important to look after the habitat that's all around and not just where the hives are located.
SPEAKER_03And of course they bring back some of the pollen from those different things that they are pollinating, the apples, the blueberries, lavender plants, for example, and that also helps to flavor the honey. And it makes for a very delicious treat.
SPEAKER_04Aaron Powell So there we go. Plant flowers, enjoy your honey.
SPEAKER_03Exactly.
SPEAKER_04Thank you, Sarah. Thank you.
SPEAKER_09Thank you for joining us for the latest episode of the Farm to Food Podcast, presented to you by Dejardet. We will have lots more about farming and all things agri-food in the coming weeks, and we'd like to thank our partners for helping bring this initiative to life. The Livestock Breeders Association in Ormstown and Quinn Farm in Notre-Dame-de-It Bay Hall for promotional support.
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