Apiaries abuzz over ruling against widening cross-border trade in live honeybees

A beekeeper tends to her hives near Bowmanville, Ontario on Thursday July 10, 2021. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Doug Ives

The dismissal of a class-action lawsuit over rules governing the cross-border live bee trade is casting a spotlight on political division within Canada's beekeeping community.

A federal judge has ruled against awarding commercial beekeepers damages from a decades-old partial ban on shipping live honeybees across the Canada-U.S. border, which is in place out of concerns that could bring in aggressive pests and diseases.

Beekeepers from Western Canada involved in the suit claim the government's risk assessments that inform the tight restrictions are hurting their businesses and are blown out of proportion.

Michael Paradis of Paradis Honey Ltd., a seven-generation family beekeeping business based in Girouxville, Alta., and one of the representative plaintiffs in the case, said he's disappointed with the ruling, saying it puts beekeepers in a "dangerous position" since the industry is already in crisis mode.

"Canada does not have enough bees and cannot replenish its own stock at all," he said. "It's going to mean a lot more hardship for the industry if we cannot get access to the U.S. bees."

Beekeepers were slammed during the COVID-19 pandemic, when fewer airline flights made it harder to import bees and they suffered a nightmare year of winter losses in 2022.

Manitoba commercial beekeeper Brent Ash, one of the witnesses in the case, said the ruling will hamper the industry, and makes it especially tough for apiaries in colder parts of the country like the Prairies, where most of Canada's beekeepers are located.

"Climate makes the regional divide difficult to keep those bugs alive over the course of the winter," he said, noting honeybees are not native to North America.

But Steve Moore, president of the Ontario Beekeepers' Association, said his group worries about the risks of accidentally bringing in antibiotic resistant mites, the import of Africanized honeybees commonly known as killer bees, and a small hive beetle that's capable of damaging colonies.

"In Ontario here, we feel quite strongly that we don't want to take the risk of it becoming even more challenging if some of these new and emerging threats come into the country in packages," he said.

But he empathizes with the plaintiffs.

"When we go into our apiaries, we get stung by our bees. When we come home, we might be stung by a low honey price, stung by rising cost of production or stung by high overwintering losses, with the threat of new and emerging pathogens. So, we're all facing the same challenges and it's a challenging time to be a beekeeper," he said.

Even though a ban on U.S. live bee imports expired in 2006, Ottawa has not issued permits for the live worker bee boxes to be brought over the border since. The plaintiffs argued Ottawa owes them duty of care — and hundreds of millions in damages.

The judge disagreed.

"There is no duty of care owed and no negligence," Justice Cecily Strickland wrote in a lengthy ruling, adding the plaintiffs failed to establish that Ottawa hurt their businesses.

The case has a long history, dating back to a court filing from 2012, and was only certified as a class action in 2017.

The problem is even older. Headlines from the 1980s screamed about fears that deadly infectious mites from U.S. states could level Canadian bee populations. Risks to bee health have only compounded since then.

A 2003 risk assessment by the regulator found that importing queen bees was less risky, since they are easier to inspect. So, Canada allows imports of queen bees and their worker-bee attendants from the U.S., Chile, Australia, New Zealand, Denmark, Italy and Malta.

"Bee packages carry a higher risk of disease introduction because they are shipped with the contents of their hive, which may include mites, parasites and bacteria," said a statement from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency that welcomed the judge’s ruling.

Canada does, however, also allow imports of worker bee packages from Italy, Chile, Australia and New Zealand, which sent Canada some 69,364 kgs of packaged bees in 2023, according to statistics from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada.

But importing from these countries also dramatically drives up import costs due to transportation.

One of the plaintiffs, John Gibeau, wrote to CFIA a decade ago complaining that importing more than 1,200 packages for $170,000 would have cost half that if he could have purchased them from California instead. Gibeau said he wasn't ready to comment since he hasn't yet digested the ruling.

Paradis said the larger issue for him than cost, though, is the quality of the bee stock and the timing of when shipments arrive.

"We are looking at bees in the U.S. that are spring bees — young, invigorated bees," he said, adding that gives them longer lifespans in Canada.

While he was disappointed, Paradis said one of the main reasons for the lawsuit was to "bring CFIA to the table and to actually have some discussions" on the import ban, something he said has only happened recently.

Canada's honeybee pollination is estimated to contribute $3.18 billion directly to the economy, but that rises to $7 billion a year when canola pollination is factored in. Canada has some 794,341 beehives.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 7, 2024.