There is No Way that Eastern Canadian Beekeepers can Understand Western Beekeeping¹

Chatting with some of the others at break in the SABA  meeting, I pointed out that there is no way that Eastern Canadian beekeepers can understand western beekeeping, since easterners are all south of the 49th parallel, and thus south of the very southernmost borders of all western provinces (excluding a tiny bit of Vancouver Island).  Someone mentioned bees in New Liskeard, ON, the extreme far north of Ontario beekeeping.  I looked it up.  New Liskeard, the far northernmost frontier of Ontario beekeeping, is south of the 49th! (See the right-hand end of purple line.  The curved grey line is the 49th)  For that matter, if you went straight east of my place, and I am a Southern Alberta beekeeper -- hundreds of miles south of the real centre of action in Alberta -- you'd be in James Bay.  Hardly bee country.

You'll also notice that a bit of Gaspe and the Quebec North Shore are above the 49th.  AFAIK, that is not beekeeping country.  The line continues out to Gander and Corner Brook in Newfoundland, again, not prime beekeeping country.  If you're looking for Southern Ontario, it's so far south that I accidentally cut some of it off when making this map.  I also cut of all of Alberta north of Edmonton -- including the Peace River, a major beekeeping district -- before I realized it.  That goes to show how far north the North really is.  The southernmost tip of Ontario is as far south as the Northern tip of California.

I bought hives of bees in Ontario one year, a quarter decade ago.  When I went to look at the hives in March, I was amazed to find that the bees were an entire month ahead of my own.  In some parts of the east, winter is two months -- 33% or more -- shorter than on the prairies.

 How can people that far south -- off the bottom of my map -- tell Northern Albertans -- off the top of my map -- and separated as well by many hundreds of miles of bush, lakes and prairie, how to run their businesses?  Don't you think it takes an amazing amount of gall?  I do.

Geographical considerations aside, the average size of commercial bee operations in the central provinces is in the hundreds, while in the west, the averages are in the thousands.

Not only that: I recently heard that the total number of hives in Quebec -- a province that nixed our getting queens this spring when we were in dire need -- is only 22,000.  How can that be true.  I can name three friends here in Alberta that have more hives than that, when added together! 

How can such distant and inconsequential groups hold sway over our livelihood?  Only in Canada. 

Pity!

Tuesday November 11, 2008 04:21 AM

1. After I wrote this, I realized that there are, of course, exceptions.  One of the problems that have characterized this whole 'debate' is the sweeping generalizations and a tendency to overlook the individual exceptions.  I apologize to Jack H and a few others -- they know who they are -- who are the exceptions.