P.E.I. to welcome 1,000 queen bees

Islanders proved earlier this week that they love royalty and now there's movement to bring 1,000 queen bees to P.E.I.

The last few years have been rough ones for bees.

They've suffered from diseases and other problems that have lead to colony collapse around the world.

That hurts anyone growing crops that depend on pollination.

On P.E.I., blueberry growers have taken a hit.

Rodrigo Leiva, a bee expert from Chile, was hired by Blueberry grower Jasper Wyman.

"Here on the Island, we need more bees. More bees is more blueberries."

So Leiva is breeding more —1,000 queen bees in five months.

It's a complicated process that involves grafting cells, insemination and perfect timing.

He said it's better to breed local bees than to import ones that could carry diseases.

Each queen bee can lay up to 1,000 eggs a day. That's what makes them so valuable.

It's why breeding local bees has become something of a movement on P.E.I.

It has the backing of industry, government and beekeepers.

John Burhoe, a small-scale bee breeder, said the province is heading in the right direction.

"It has been my dream to make the Island self-sufficient in bees and I think we're on the verge of becoming self sufficient in our bee stocks on the Island here."

He said self-sufficiency would mean bee colonies here won't be as susceptible to problems and will perform better in this climate.

"It's important for us to develop a bee that is able to cope with the environmental constrictions that we have here, not just on the Island but in the Maritimes."

Gerald Campbell uses local bees. He just bought 15,000 of Burhoe's bees to pollinate his 20 acres of blueberries.

"With the bees, they will pollinate them all even more berries on that patch same all over the field.

At Wyman's, each one of Leiva's queens will be assigned her own colony of 30,000 bees.

Hopefully, the bees will help make next year's blueberry crop successful.