Saskatchewan beekeeper stings insurance agent in court after being told to buzz off

Female leafcutter bees carve pieces of leaves off plants to wrap their larvae. Here's one using a flower petal for the job. (Source: Government of Manitoba)

A Saskatchewan beekeeper who lost out on a season’s worth of larvae sales has won a minor victory in a court battle with his insurer — but he’s getting less than he hoped.

Russell Kushniruk is a beekeeper and teacher with an apiary near Cana, Saskatchewan — a rural municipality located about 160 kilometres northeast of Regina. He raises leafcutter bees that are rented by farmers to pollinate their alfalfa and sweet clover fields, and later sells the larvae they produce to buyers across Western Canada and the U.S.

Kushniruk took Saskatoon’s O’Reilly Insurance to court last month after his claim was rejected by the Co-operators, which it acts as an agent for.

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Like most agricultural operators, Kushniruk buys insurance to cover potential losses. According to court records, he took out policies on his bees from 2017 to 2019, then again in 2021 — all through O’Reilly.

In 2017, he made an insurance claim and was paid over $50,000 for the loss of bees and larvae after a windstorm caused a lack of flowers and there wasn’t enough food to sustain the colonies’ reproduction.

When he renewed the insurance in 2021, Kushniruk reached out to O’Reilly about obtaining the same policy.

“Kushniruk understood that, again, the policy covered bees put out in the field at the beginning of the season and bees/larvae above those put out including those which would be produced over the season,” Saskatoon King’s Bench Justice Rochelle Wempe wrote in a ruling last month.

But after that year’s larvae harvest was again hindered by a powerful windstorm, the Co-operators denied his claim, saying the coverage was applied incorrectly in 2017.

Kushniruk filed a claim against O’Reilly for negligence and breach of contract, seeking $118,000 in damages.

“Kushniruk believed that he had the same policy and same coverage as 2017. By selling Kushniruk a policy which did not cover what he specified, he argues O’Reilly breached their contract with him and failed to meet the duty of care they owed to him.”

In her June 18 written decision, Wempe ruled the beekeeper’s contract was actually with the Co-operators and not O’Reilly, so there was no merit to claim breach of contract against them, but she agreed there were grounds for negligence.

According to Wempe, Kushniruk clearly communicated the terms of the coverage he sought, and as the insurance agent, it was up to O’Reilly to let him know the Co-operators would not meet those terms.

“The evidence was that Kushniruk made it clear to [O’Reilly] he wanted coverage for both the bees put out in the field and the larvae which would be produced over the season. It is also clear that Kushniruk believed he had that coverage,” Wempe writes.

“If the insurance Kushniruk wanted was not available through the Co-operators, O’Reilly had a duty to notify Kushniruk of the same.”

Kushniruk proved his case for negligence but not for the sizeable damages he claimed because he failed to prove he could have purchased the insurance he wanted anywhere else.

For its part, O’Reilly provided evidence that two other insurers — SGI and SMI — didn’t provide that kind of coverage, either.

Since there was no proof he could have found insurance for the future production of larvae, Wempe just ordered O’Reilly to repay Kushniruk’s premiums for the coverage he thought he had — a total of $963.

Kushniruk was also awarded costs for the judgment in the amount of $4,400.