A New Brunswick Bee Farmer says he’s doing better than most honey producers in the province this year, and he credits the buzzing success to natural pollination.
Marr’s Sweet Syrup co-owner Tavis Marr says he has happy, healthy bees this year, after only experiencing a three per cent winter loss.
“We manage and make sure we have enough bees at all times and make sure our queens are producing properly and we just, we like to have full hives with happy bees,” Marr said.
Marr says he and his family started bee farming four years ago and have been incorporated for a year. The Marr’s use the honey they collect from the hive to create and sell raw honey-based products.
“We chose to do natural pollination just on our own fields, we don’t do commercial pollination at all. We find it just works better for us, we find we don’t have as many die off every year and they don’t seem to get poisoned at all,” Marr said.
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Marr says they’ve grown this year from 13 hives to 52 hives, adding they haven’t had any sick hives or problems that they couldn’t overcome.
“We lost one hive last year, we didn’t have the big loss like all the other bigger bee keepers do, I think mainly because ours don’t go to commercial pollination so they’ve never really seen pesticides or insecticides or anything they’re on our own properties,” Marr said.
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The New Brunswick Department of Agriculture, Aquaculture and Fisheries says the provincial average loss rate — based on the The Canadian Association of Professional Apiarist’s report — was 16.6 per cent.
The report shows that the national average is 16.8 per cent, which is based on survey responses from bee farmers across the country.
Marr says he hopes to double or triple his hive numbers for next year.
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