I've been absent for a bit, so I couldn't remember if I had posted something on this but oh well.
We had a beekeepers "symposium" back in January, something put on and paid for completely by the Provincial government. There was no agenda given but it was an all day affair so we knew something had to be up. Turns out there was a really good turn out, more than any of our associations AGM's.
I am happy to report that after several years of knuckle dragging by the province, numerous interviews and articles written, and even a demonstration down at Province house, the Gov.
finally did the right thing and
closed our borders to imports from other provinces. I guess I can put away my signs for now.
A lot of this was helped by the fact blueberry prices have gone down the toilet and the demand for bees has dropped. In 2012 there were roughly 16,500 colonies in NS and as of last year we had just under 28,000. The bee industry met the challenge to meet the blueberry industries "needs" and expanded to fill the demand. We now have more than enough local bees so maintaining an open border looks foolish. Blueberry growers need roughly 45 cents a pound to break even and last year (2017) they got 22 cents. With a huge glut in production and freezers full of blueberries there are many growers pulling fields out of production.
I am sure that this border closure will have to withstand a yearly review, but so be it. Our neighbour province New Brunswick did not use stringent inspections and paid the price, 12 separate and confirmed cases of SHB in the province in 1 year from bees from 1 operation in Ontario. PEI has just had their government decide to allow bees into their province from Ontario for 2018 with few minor restrictions. How sad. If they had maintained a disease protocol similar to ours here in NS we could have sent excess hives to PEI to aid in pollination, but because they will be allowing hives in from Ontario we cannot. How shortsighted is that? They have the benefit of looking at how 2 different provinces responded and the results of that, and still managed to screw it up.