"for food supplement I was wondering if thought had been given to planting 
fields of plants that are of great interest to the bees in way of nectar and 
pollen production?"

Yes this has been the idea in a second phase of the project but we haven't 
gotten that far.  This too though is seen by most as unrealistic and 
expensive.  On the other hand there is a push from the governement now 
towards expanding agriculture northward, diversifying agriculture and 
promoting local food production thus the idea of planting other fruiting 
crops complementary to blueberry in terms of flowering period such as 
seabuckthorn, haskaps, saskatoons and raspberries is being looked into.

Sweet clover could be grown in the area if the soils were well limed. Red 
maples do not come this far north to any degree but the mountain maple does 
grow here and this one is interesting in that it flowers much later than 
other maples, when air temperatures are more favourable for the bees.  We 
found quite a bit of pollen from this maple in our samples even though we 
did not come across it on our transects.  Other plants that we did not 
encounter on our transects but that the bees discovered were bogbean and 
waterlilies- not in any significant quantities though.

All the best,
Kristine

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