N.S. family suits up to rescue unwanted bees
The yard beside the Dugas household house is buzzing with exercise.
Amanda and Lonnie Dugas, and their children Gregory, 17, and Sarah, 14, have round half a dozen beehives on their Brentwood, N.S., property.
Amanda Dugas, a Mi’kmaw scholar assist employee at an area highschool, by no means noticed herself changing into a beekeeper. When a chance got here up for her to take a summer time course in beekeeping together with her daughter a number of years in the past, they went for it. Quickly, the entire household was donning their bee fits to care for hives.
“It simply type of acquired us by way of the pandemic as a household. It gave us one thing to do as a result of we could not go anyplace,” Amanda Dugas mentioned.
Within the fall, they promote honey from their apiary, however in the summertime, Gregory and Sarah spend their additional time making home calls to soundly take away bee nests from folks’s houses.
Most of them are wild bumble bees which they relocate to farms that need the bugs.
Amanda Dugas says some folks nonetheless see bees as pests, and even attempt to exterminate the bees themselves with pesticides.
However she says consciousness across the significance of bees to the ecosystem has triggered the demand for his or her rescue providers to extend annually.
“Persons are prepared to pay a few youngsters to come back into their home and safely, humanely take away bees from their dwelling and know that these bees are going someplace to be taken care of,” she mentioned.
Based on data from the Canadian Association of Professional Apiculturists, the largest-ever variety of bees survived the 2020-21 winter in Nova Scotia since such reporting started in 2007.
Outlook encouraging
That success is due partly to the truth that importing bees is banned in Nova Scotia, in line with Tyler Hobbs, president of the Nova Scotia Beekeepers’ Affiliation.
“We actually need to depend on one another proper right here within the province. If a catastrophe strikes within the winter, we want one another. We’re one another’s reply to get out of it,” Hobbs mentioned.
“So that basically makes Nova Scotia fairly distinctive relating to beekeeping and actually type of focuses us the place we put our efforts and our cash and our time to be sure that our populations are steady.”
He says over the previous few years, appreciation for bees has grown “leaps and bounds.”
“Folks used to see a bee and kill it. Now folks supply it water or some honey to see if it can spruce up and fly away once more,” he mentioned.
The Dugas children mentioned they perceive that some persons are afraid of bees. Sarah herself was “terrified” when she first began interacting with their hives. However after a pair years with them, each mentioned their favorite factor about bees is how light they’re.
They’ve even taught their pals about bees.
‘Mild’ creatures
A few them are terrified, however I’ve had a few pals out beekeeping with me and so they’ve mentioned that it is fairly an pleasing expertise and so they actually get pleasure from how light the bees will be,” Gregory mentioned.
Finally, Gregory needs folks to know that bees do not pose any actual hazard.
“It is good to have them in your property — higher pollination to your flowers and your timber which are in your yard. They usually do not bug you except you bug them.”
