Honey Bee Queen Production: Canadian Costing Case Study and Profitability Analysis.
J Econ Entomol
; 113(4): 1618-1627, 2020 08 13.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE | ID: covidwho-735735
ABSTRACT
The decline in managed honey bee (Hymenoptera Apidae) colony health worldwide has had a significant impact on the beekeeping industry. To mitigate colony losses, beekeepers in Canada and around the world introduce queens into replacement colonies; however, Canada's short queen rearing season has historically limited the production of early season queens. As a result, Canadian beekeepers rely on the importation of foreign bees, particularly queens from warmer climates. Importing a large proportion of (often mal-adapted) queens each year creates a dependency on foreign bee sources, putting beekeeping, and pollination sectors at risk in the event of border closures, transportation issues, and other restrictions as is currently happening due to the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic. Although traditional Canadian queen production is unable to fully meet early season demand, increasing domestic queen production to meet mid- and later season demand would reduce Canada's dependency. As well, on-going studies exploring the potential for overwintering queens in Canada may offer a strategy to have early season domestic queens available. Increasing the local supply of queens could provide Canadian beekeepers, farmers, and consumers with a greater level of agricultural stability and food security. Our study is the first rigorous analysis of the economic feasibility of queen production. We present the costs of queen production for three Canadian operations over two years. Our results show that it can be profitable for a beekeeping operation in Canada to produce queen cells and mated queens and could be one viable strategy to increase the sustainability of the beekeeping industry.
Keywords
Full text:
Available
Collection:
International databases
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Pneumonia, Viral
/
Reproduction
/
Coronavirus Infections
/
Beekeeping
/
Pandemics
Type of study:
Case report
/
Prognostic study
Limits:
Animals
Country/Region as subject:
North America
Language:
English
Journal:
J Econ Entomol
Year:
2020
Document Type:
Article
Affiliation country:
Jee
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