ASSISTING | Overwintering nucs in collaboration with Dr. Leonard Foster’s lab from the University of British Columbia  

This project has been sponsored by Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) and Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) in combination with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) and their joint efforts through Sustainable Agriculture Research Initiative (SARI).

Principle Investigator

Collaborators

Objectives

The objective of this project is to find ways to increase the survival rate of honey bee queens throughout the winter months in order to reduce the high number of imported queens that Canada receives every year (over 350,000 queen bees every year). With Canada being home to so many different climates, winter looks different depending on where you are located, so Dr. Leonard Foster is collaborating with researchers at universities across the country including the University of Lethbridge, and the Université Laval.  

“Our project aims to complete a systematic evaluation of different strategies for overwintering honey bee queens, including an evaluation of the economics of different strategies,” says Dr. Foster (Chow, 2023). 

“This funding will support a coordinated effort across BC, Alberta and Quebec to test various overwintering strategies, annually iterating through different variables to arrive at best practices depending on which region of Canada you are in,” explains Dr. Foster (Chow, 2023). 

For more information on this project, click here. 

Length of project

Proposed end date by 2028.

References

Chow, Q. (2024, October 2). Keeping honey bee queens healthy through Canadian winters. UBC Faculty of Medicine. Available at https://www.med.ubc.ca/news/keeping-honey-bee-queens-healthy-through-canadian-winters/