Regina beekeeper searching for lost bees

A Regina beekeeper is searching for a swarm of bees that got away from his hive in the McNab neighbourhood of Regina over the weekend.

Berny Hi has been a beekeeper for six years, which he said is not very long in terms of other beekeepers in the province, but he is very passionate about the hobby.

"It's been one of the best things I've ever done with my life and it feels really right for me to be doing," Hi said. "I'll continue to do it for as long as I can." 

Hi explained that during a honeybee's natural reproduction they split like cell division until the older queen bee will leave with her own colony of worker bees, leaving the hive for a new queen to be born.

In this instance, Hi said several new queens were born and one of the new virgin queens went off on a mating flight but didn't return.

"One of them got stuck up in a tree and didn't know her way back and she was too high for me to get it which is way way way too high to be safely trying to get them," Hi said. "So I was waiting patiently and watching them for over 24 hours and hoping to catch the moment that they decided to go away somewhere and build a new home."

Hi said he missed the colony's departure by a few minutes, and there was no evidence of where they could have ended up.

He estimates that a small colony of one-thousand bees escaped, which sounds like a lot but Hi said in terms of volume it's not that many bees.

"My concern is that she doesn't have enough bees and doesn't have a good enough home to naturally exist in our North American climate especially over winter," Hi said. "My fear is that as a beekeeper I've kind of failed because they've gone off and they will just die without some sort of help."

"It's pretty sad, it's like losing a family pet."

How bee-friendly is Regina?

Hi said if someone sees a swarm of bees, honey or other, they should report it to the Regina Bee Club for them to safely remove the colony.

"Oftentimes a mating swarm or a swarm from a hive is going to be fairly docile," Hi said. "That being said it's always best to just call a beekeeper and let them deal with it."

He said one thing about beekeeping in Regina is that the city is not necessarily bee-friendly.

"It's a grey area where bees are kind of allowed to exist unless a lot of people complain about them and then the city can say 'You've got to close down your apiary,' which is always kind of feeling like walking on eggshells for urban beekeepers," Hi said.

"It would be really nice if Regina just came out and said 'Yes, we are bee friendly, we're happy to have honeybee keepers in the city to provide pollination and honey."

Hi said he is still looking for his lost bees even though the odds of finding them are against him.

"I got a few tips from various people online and who had seen some interesting activity in bees or flies," Hi said. "I've been kind of walking around the neighborhood because what I don't want to do is bug someone."

"Time is kind of ticking," Hi said. "I've got a feeling that I'm not going to find them because it would be really rare."