Thanks for the replies. The provincial government takes a very economic orientation to the fledgling beekeeping "industry" here and wants to support people with commercial aspirations. Certainly, our association supports its commercial beekeepers as well as the hobbyists, but we want to expand responsibly and cautiously, and with decisions made in a rigorous and transparent manner. The decision to permit the importation of the 130 packages from WA had nothing to do with breeding/genetics; it was simply to support the aspirations of a couple people, one of whom wants to expand ASAP to take advantage of pollination contracts and make a full-time living from beekeeping, another who is really a vegetable farmer who apparently gets a significant boost in production from honey bee pollination. The importers met the formal, legal requirements for importation (CFIA process, etc.) and so the provincial government argued it had no choice but to permit the importation (I do not agree with this argument, by the way).  It is reasonable to say that there is a significant lack of technical expertise at the provincial government with respect to apiculture.  But the province is virtually destitute and we have to work with what we've got…..

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