INSIDE: Former school district employee charged with sex crime Pg. 3 May 28, 2010
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LOCAL NEWS, SPORTS, WEATHER & ENTERTAINMENT chilliwacktimes.com
Budget passes, but not without a fight
Busy Bees
The humble honey bee gets its own day BY CORNELIA NAYLOR cnaylor@chilliwacktimes.com
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omorrow, May 29 is B.C.’s first annual Day of the Honey Bee, but for both bees and beekeepers in Chilliwack it will likely just be busyness as usual. “Every day is the day for the honey bee for us,” said Pia Awram, who owns Honeyview Farm in Rosedale with her husband Jerry. The province declared the day last November to raise awareness about the important role bees play in agriculture and draw attention to a decline in their numbers that isn’t completely understood. The idea of setting aside a day to honour the industrious insect was spearheaded last year by an urban beekeeper in Saskatoon whose ultimate goal is to have all levels of government, including the United Nations, declare May 29 the Day of the Honey Bee. So far 57 municipalities and provincial governments across Canada are on board. Locally, the bee has found a friend in the mayor of Kent/Agassiz, Lorne Fisher who made the declaration this month. He was inspired in part by the lone bumblebee that had to pollinate his blueberry patch with no help from a sparse honeybee population. “He was a pretty lonesome fella for two or three weeks,” said Fisher. Having spent a career as a research scientist with Agriculture Canada, Fisher knows the problem of declining honeybee populations affects more than his blueberry patch; one third of all food crops need pollination, and bees do almost all of it. See BEES, Page 3
BY CORNELIA NAYLOR cnaylor@chilliwacktimes.com
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ttempts by two trustees to introduce 11th hour changes into next year’s $105 million school district budget were ruled out of order at Tuesday’s school board meeting. Before the final vote on the budget, Trustee Heather Maahs tried to propose an amendment that would have see nthe district re-evaluate the cost-cutting shuffle of princiEB IRST palsandvice-prin- First reported on cipals planned for chilliwacktimes.com next year while Trustee Martha Wiens attempted to propose a change that would have had the district revisit the busing fees parents will have to pay next year. Board chair Silvia Dyck ruled both amendments out of order because they were not related to specific budget line items. In the budget debate that followed, Maahs and Wiens continued to opposed the budget saying the district hadn’t consulted enough with parents about busing fees and changes to school administrations. Wiens said she felt the school district has looked on parents as a “cash cow” since spending a $6 million
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Cornelia Naylor/TIMES
Honeyview Farm beekeeper Jerry Aspilan examines nurse bees attending cells from which new queens will emerge.
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See BUDGET, Page 5
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