Table of Contents

 

Beekeeping Industry Statistics

No. of Beekeepers - 2,400
No. of Producing Colonies - 76,700
Average Yield/Colony (lb/kg) - 110.5/50.12
Total Estimated Crop (lb/kg x 1 000) - 8,475,278/3,844
Colonies Winter Last Year - 76,000
Average Winter Mortality (%) - 11.43%

Diseases and Pests

 

Disease/Pest	Number of Colonies Inspected	Number of Beekeepers Inspected	Disease Colony Incidence (%)	Disease Beekeeper Incidence (%)
AFB*	8,694		3.25%
EFB	8,694		0.07%
Chalkbrood	8,694		2.38%
Sacbrood	8,694		0.15%

Tracheal Mite: Sampling continues for sales where beekeeper does not know if HBTM is present. Thunder Bay area is still free of HBTM.

Varroa Mite: The only area left that does not have Varroa is Thunder Bay

Other: Probably 65% of the colonies in Ontario are resistant to Apistan ®. There are several spot areas where Check-Mite ™ does not work. A new area for Check-Mite ™ resistance is Niagara. Beekeepers should be continually monitoring if the treatment that they used actually worked. If you suspect that your treatment did not work contact your local bee inspector, the provincial apiarist or the Tech-Transfer Team of the OBA for further testing. The 2006 recommendations for treating for the mites is to treat in the spring and early fall with formic acid and follow up at packing time with an oxalic acid treatment. AFB treatment recommendations are three treatments in the spring and three in the fall with Oxy-tetracycline. No resistance to Oxy-tetracycline has shown up in the samples from each find of AFB that has been sent to the USDA Lab in Beltsville, Maryland.

Regular Inspections: 789
Queen and Nuc Inspections: 358
Selling Permit Inspections: 350
Moving Permit Inspections: 52

Total Inspections: 1549

Note*: One beekeeper had 99 colonies of AFB

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Comments

Ontario experienced an excellent wintering season over the winter of 2005-06. Losses were about half of those that have become normal now with the mites. Early spring weather was ideal for building the population of honey bees in the colonies. Those beekeepers that did not split their colonies had a great deal of swarming. After that it was wet and cool and a lot of the virgin queens produced during the swarming did not get very well mated and were superseded later in the season.

There was a very strong honey flow in July of excellent white honey. Beekeepers indicate that they averaged about 110 pounds per colony from that flow. Most areas dried up in August and very few beekeepers had any late honey from the golden rod and fall aster. Rainy River had their best crop ever from second cut alfalfa that was left by the farmers because it was too short to cut. It bloomed and produced lots of honey.

The season appeared to be ideal for the development of the mites. In the fall the Tech-Transfer Team were doing "Mite-Scouting" with several of the commercial beekeepers and the mite levels were quite high. If you are interested you should talk to the Tech-Transfer Team about scouting your bee outfit.

The honey market for bulk honey remained down with beekeepers reporting a return of .95 per pound in 2005 with no change in 2006. The volume of honey sold by Ontario beekeepers as retail pack stayed constant in 2005 with 2004 but because the total production was up in 2005 from 2004 the percentage of honey sold retail dropped by about 10%. The retail price reported for 2005 was $2.07 per pound.
This is the incentive to pack and sell as much of your production as possible.

The number of beekeepers is down about 200 to 2400.

The number of colonies went up by 700 to 76,700.

Beekeepers are looking for alternative income from their honey bees as the bulk price is below what beekeepers feel is the cost of production. 37 semi loads (13500 colonies) of bees were rented to blueberry and cranberry growers in Quebec and New Brunswick in 2006. This worked better than previous seasons as the bees were returned faster this season and therefore came back in better shape. The bees were also back in time to get some of the July honey flow.

Cucumber pollination has dropped right off as the contractors apparently have moved production to United States.

Orchard pollination continues at about the same pace as before but slowly many orchards are being removed.

Pumpkins and other vine crops appear to be increasing with added rentals of bees for pollination.

Over all Ontario Beekeepers appear to be happy with beekeeping. The beekeepers that depend on the bulk market are having problems. Most beekeepers are having reasonable success with controlling the mites. No major disasters occurred with any wide spread problems.

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