The Chilliwack
Progress Thursday
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3
Scene
News
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Sports
Stage
Crime
Soccer
Murder comes to GW Graham Theatre.
Anti-gang police publish first community report.
Crosstown rivals meet on the pitch.
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Candidates navigate water issues Alina Konevski The Progress
As guests were ushered into the Sto:lo Resource Centre by volunteers fully covered in blue leotards (the human “water droplets” make water visible, explained an organizer), it was clear that this allcandidates’ meeting in Chilliwack would be slightly different. All but one of the Chilliwack and Chilliwack-Hope candidates vying for an MLA seat this election turned out to talk water, environment, and First Nations’ rights at the debate Tuesday night, organized by environmental advocacy organization WaterWealth Project. B.C. Liberal John Martin, running in Chilliwack, couldn’t attend because of a prior campaign commitment. “I regret I cannot attend this one as I enjoy these types of forums and believe they are important to the democratic process,” wrote Martin to WaterWealth campaign director Sheila Muxlow a few weeks ago. The debate brought in a full house of people who questioned candidates on the B.C. Water Act, juggling environmental protection with economic growth, the legality of aboriginal rights and title, tap water chlorination, fish farms, pipelines, and other topics. One question had candidates set a vision for their community that balances environmental stewardship with economic development. “Job creation and environmental stewardship are not mutually exclusive,” said Green Party candidate Kim Reimer, running in Chilliwack. “There are more jobs created for every dollar invested in clean technology than there are in fossil fuel technology. I think we just need creative initiatives and incentives by the government for us to start investing in these projects.” NDP candidate for Chilliwack-Hope, Gwen O’Mahony, sees the answer in supporting small- and medium-sized businesses that are using greener technologies for common tasks, such as roofing.
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Bee shortage causing buzz in blueberry fields
Alina Konevski The Progress
During the past few weeks, Rosedale beekeeper Peter Awram has been getting panicked calls from blueberry growers from Chilliwack and the Lower Mainland. They’re asking him for hives, whatever he can spare, and he’s turning most of them away. Blueberry farms in Chilliwack and across B.C. are in crisis mode. Blueberries need to be pollinated now. But there aren’t enough wild bees, and growers are constrained by the dearth of pollination services. Awram works at Honeyview Farms in Rosedale alongside his
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Peter Awram of Honeyview Farm inspects one of the hives at a blueberry farm in Yarrow. The blueberry farm hired Honeyview to use its bees for pollinating its berry crops. JENNA HAUCK/ PROGRESS
parents and two brothers. The family business is the largest bee farm in British Columbia, with about 4,000 hives. While the company raises bees to produce honey, one-third to half of its business comes from renting out honeybees to growers to pollinate this season’s crops, especially blueberries. “Just about everybody is using bees,” said Prof. Tom Baumann, who heads the University of the Fraser Valley’s Pacific Berry Resource Centre in Chilliwack. “It’s crucial to have bees. Otherwise there’s not much fruit, or miserably small berries.” Each acre of blueberries needs several hives to pollinate
it to ensure a good crop, but with honeybee populations in severe decline globally, Awram estimates that there’s not even one hive per blueberry acre in B.C. The results are usually the puny blueberries that shoppers see in the market. Despite over whelming demand for pollination services, Honeyview Farms hasn’t been able to increase its hive numbers in recent years because of the challenges of the bee business. One is the mysterious and unsolved colony collapse disorder, which hit Honeyview last year. “They started of, they looked fine, and then they just went
down, down, down,” said Awram. Another is the difficulty of nurturing bees through the Canadian winter, and replenishing hive numbers in the spring. “We can count on losing 25 per cent of bees over winter,” said Awram. Wintering equipment is very expensive, costing Honeyview $250 per hive. With 4,000 hives, that’s $1 million each year just on nurturing bees through the cold months. What complicates the situation is that Honeyview, like all Canadian beekeepers, cannot import two-pound boxed packages of bees from mainland U.S. Continued: BEE/ p13
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