Dr. Leonard Foster receives $4.5 million grant to sustain honey bee queens through Canadian winters

Dr. Leonard Foster

Dr. Leonard Foster (Michael Smith Laboratories, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology) has been awarded an almost $4.5 million grant for a project that will evaluate strategies for overwintering honey bee queens in Canada, which would reduce the need to import over 350,000 queen bees each year to replace those lost during the winter months.

This funding comes from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) and Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) joint Sustainable Agriculture Research Initiative (SARI). In partnership with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, SARI aims to “support research to initiate or accelerate the development of transformative innovations, practices, technologies, products, land uses and inputs that will lead to a sustainable, profitable and resilient agriculture and agri-food sector in the uncertain climate and net-zero economy of the future.”

Honey bees are essential to the agriculture industry in Canada, providing $7 billion in value through pollinating crops such as blueberries and the oilseed crop from which canola oil is extracted.

Many bee colonies don’t make it through the Canadian winter, however, due to pests and extreme weather events caused by climate change. Over one-quarter of colonies are lost each year, and new queen bees need to be flown in to replace them from the USA, Italy, Ukraine, New Zealand and Chile – flights which have high costs in the form of greenhouse gas emissions.

Dr. Foster’s project is looking to find a way to eliminate the need to import honey bee queens come the spring by helping them survive the winter.

“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,” shares Dr. Foster.

Recognizing that strategies need to be region-specific, as winter looks different across the country, Dr. Foster has partnered with researchers at the University of Lethbridge and Université Laval for this project.

“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.

At the end of this four-year project, the team will share their findings with beekeepers across the country so new strategies can be put into practice, helping the agriculture sector to become more sustainable in the years to come.

Quick links:

• Learn more about the three other UBC projects funded through this initiative
• Read the full NSERC funding announcement
• Learn more about Dr. Foster’s research program