> What it still doesn't address is compensation for financial losses by beekeepers if their apiaries suffer from a dust kill.

Well, I hope they don't travel down the route that the USA did, where beekeepers were simply paid any time they thought they had a bee kill. This neatly ducks the issue of responsibility. No blame was assigned to the farmer who sprayed, the vendor who sold the spray, the company that made it, the government that approved it, the beekeeper who put his hives next to a crop that he knew would be sprayed. The program was discontinued due to widespread abuse (beekeepers collecting for the same empty hives year after year).

More recently, the beekeeping industry was compensated by the US government with money set aside for the Emergency Livestock Assistance Program. The program included the provision: "to be eligible for a loss of honeybees due to colony collapse disorder, the eligible honeybee producer must provide documentation to support that the loss was due to colony collapse disorder." Which is ironic, since no one has ever determined what CCD was. Yet millions were paid out, until the government realized this could go on forever, paying for empty hives. 

The Canadian Government, in its wisdom, declared that there was no CCD in Canada, so no payments for bee losses should be expected. Attention shifted to Agrochemicals as a possible culprit. Beekeepers have been keen on finding some deep pocketed source of compensation. Whether it’s the farmers who applied the chemicals, the companies who made them, or the provincial governments who approved the applications, the thinking goes: someone should be made to pay. But seriously, folks, who's to blame if I take a walk on the interstate and get run down by a truck.

Peter Loring Borst

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