Photo by House of Rose Winery
Beehives
Bee hives at the House of Rose Winery in Kelowna.
Beekeepers around the province have another opportunity to apply for BeeBC funding to help with projects in their communities to support the health of bees in British Columbia.
“The BeeBC program is making it possible for our beekeepers to develop new and innovative ways to help our honey bees,” said Lana Popham, Minister of Agriculture. “A healthy population of honey bees and native pollinators in BC not only provides us with delicious locally-sourced honey, it supports our environment as well as our agriculture industry, so that British Columbians will have more BC products at their tables, now and for generations to come.”
Popham announced BeeBC is providing an additional $50,000 in funding to beekeepers while attending the 2018 BC Honey Producers Association (BCHPA) annual general meeting in Victoria.
The initial round of funding for the program was announced during the Day of the Honey Bee in May 2018, with 11 projects now underway around the province. The projects range from educational programs and hands-on experience for youth, to studying queen bees and disease management in hives by local beekeepers.
“Pollination services from beekeepers increases the value of crops in BC by hundreds of millions of dollars a year," said Kerry Clark, president of the BCHPA. "The annual funding to the BCHPA that the minister had already announced enabled research designed to address critical bee health issues. This announcement today adds even more opportunity for a range of local honey bee related projects in communities throughout BC.”
The BeeBC program provides funding to smaller-scale community-based projects that support the health of BC’s bees. The fund provides support to research, explore, field-test and share information about best management practices associated with bee health.
Popham also announced the further expansion of the province’s apiary inspection team, noting that the East Kootenay region will soon have its own bee inspector assigned to the area to improve efficiency and responsiveness to bee-related service requests. The new addition, as well as two new inspectors hired last spring, makes the current team the largest and most comprehensive apiary inspection service the Apiculture Program has ever had in BC.
The BeeBC program is administered by the Investment Agriculture Foundation, on behalf of the Ministry of Agriculture.
For more information on BeeBC: http://iafbc.ca/funding-opportunities/bee-bc