Murder hornets the latest threat to B.C. honey bees
It's been a tough year for honey bees, and murder hornets certainly haven't helped.
Each giant hornet can kill over 10,000 bees within an hour, and within a few hours, they can take out an entire hive.
Murder hornets weren't something B.C. farmers had to worry about a few years ago but now, they're a growing concern.
By this time of year the bees at BCB Honey Farm in Surrey, B.C. would normally be ready for winter.
But this isn't a typical year. Dr. Iman Tabari, the owner of the farm, decided to move his bees to the warmer Fraser Valley a month later than normal in a bid to protect them from murder hornets, which are starting to enter their slaughter phase.
Several murder hornets have been spotted in Washington State, but a new study suggests the mild winters and high amounts of rain present in B.C. is a perfect climate for the invasive insects.
Honey bees in Asia developed a way to defend against murder hornets, by joining together to form a 'ball' around them and flapping their wings to generate enough heat to kill it. Honey bees in North America, however, are still defenseless.
So beekeepers like Dr. Tabari have taken matters into their own hands by creating traps containing a protein source like meat.
The murder hornets are just another hurdle facing Canada's bees.
Everything -- from weather extremes to habitat loss to diseases -- are putting bees at risk. Currently, eight species of bees are listed on Canada's species at risk registry.
In the long term, Dr. Tabari hopes the government will step in to help increase bee populations across the province.
Thumbnail image courtesy of Yasunori Koide/Wikipedia Creative Commons. CC BY-SA 4.0
