Work stoppage possible as WestJet issues lockout notice to maintenance engineers' union
A lockout notice issued by WestJet to a union representing aircraft maintenance engineers could result in a work stoppage next week.
This past winter saw record losses for beekeepers, and one expert says the prospects for next year are even worse if they face another frigid winter.
Last winter, beekeepers across the country faced average losses of nearly 45 per cent, with some bee farms seeing losses as high as 90 per cent. Leonard Foster, a professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at the University of British Columbia, calls these losses "shocking."
"The long term historical average was maybe around 12 to 15 per cent. Over the last probably 12 or 15 years, it actually rose up to about 27 per cent. So still very high, but 45 per cent is a record and very hard to take," he told CTV's Your Morning on Friday.
On top of an unseasonably cold winter, beekeepers have also had to deal with extreme heat waves as well as the proliferation of the varroa mite, a parasitic mite that feeds on honeybees and has existed in Canada since 1989.
"Certainly these heat waves are not great for bees. They also tend to dry out the plants and make less nectar available for bees to forage on. So, that reduced the honey crop," Foster said.
Although losses at bee farms had been on the rise, Foster says the total number of honeybee colonies have been increasing as beekeepers have been successful at replenishing and multiplying their colonies.
But after the record losses last winter, "It's not clear that they're going to be able to do that this year," Foster said.
"Forty-five per cent is a huge hit. I expect we'll probably see a gradual drop in colonies next year now," he added.
It's not just honey farms that are affected by these bee deaths. Foster notes that honeybees are important pollinators for crops like blueberries and canola.
"If we lose a lot of bees over the winter, it means there's fewer bees available to pollinate those crops early on in the spring. And this particularly affects the very early blooming crops because it means that the bees are needed before beekeepers are able to replenish the numbers that they might have lost over the winter," Foster said.
"We'll see increases in prices for those crops, as well as increases in prices for honey."
A lockout notice issued by WestJet to a union representing aircraft maintenance engineers could result in a work stoppage next week.
A man accused of arson in a January Old Strathcona apartment fire is expected to be charged with manslaughter after a body was discovered in the burned building late last month.
A man was denied a $5,000 payout from his brother after a B.C. tribunal dismissed his claim disputing how many kittens were born in a litter.
Quebec provincial police handed out hundreds of fines to Hells Angels members and other supporting motorcycle clubs who met for their 'first run' in a small town near Sherbrooke, Que.
Auston Matthews was back on the ice with his teammates Saturday.
Three bodies recovered in an area of Baja California are likely to be those of the two Australians and an American who went missing last weekend during a camping and surfing trip, the state prosecutor’s office said Saturday.
Russia has put Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on its wanted list, Russian state media reported Saturday, citing the interior ministry’s database.
According to an X post by the Transportation Security Administration, officers at the Miami International Airport found the small bag of snakes hidden in a passenger's trousers on April 26 at a checkpoint.
A Chinese truck driver was praised in local media Saturday for parking his vehicle across a highway and preventing more cars from tumbling down a slope after a section of the road in the country's mountainous south collapsed and killed at least 48 people.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.
Since 1932, Montreal's Henri Henri has been filled to the brim with every possible kind of hat, from newsboy caps to feathered fedoras.
Police in Oak Bay, B.C., had to close a stretch of road Sunday to help an elephant seal named Emerson get safely back into the water.
Out of more than 9,000 entries from over 2,000 breweries in 50 countries, a handful of B.C. brews landed on the podium at the World Beer Cup this week.
Raneem, 10, lives with a neurological condition and liver disease and needs Cholbam, a medication, for a longer and healthier life.