A partnership between the governments of Canada and Alberta will help beekeepers hit hard by extreme cold and Varroa mites.
Alberta is Canada's biggest honey-producing province, and relies on bees as essential pollinators and as a steadily growing sector of the agriculture industry. Over the 2021-22 winter, Alberta's beekeepers experienced high losses due to extreme cold weather and Varroa mite infestations. Some reported losses were as high as 50 per cent.
The Canada-Alberta Bee Colony Replacement Assistance Initiative, an AgriRecovery program delivered by Agricultural Financial Services Corporation (AFSC), will compensate eligible commercial beekeepers that purchased replacement colonies, bee packages or queens between January 1, 2022 and May 1, 2023.
AgriRecovery is a federal-provincial-territorial disaster relief framework to help agricultural producers with the extraordinary costs associated with recovering from disaster situations. Eligible costs will be supported on the 60/40 federal-provincial cost-shared basis outlined under the Sustainable Canadian Agricultural Partnership.
