"I am realising that we made some assumptions when you first posted, but 
never asked how many acres of blueberries are planned, now and in the 
future, what variety of blueberry, how the project is financed, who and how 
many separate entities would
own the blueberry fields, the bees, etc.."

The numbers of producers is low but the blueberry fields themselves are 
large. The northernmost to date is about 800 hectares- I'm not sure of the 
acerage of the others.  Lowbush blueberries are there to start with so the 
fields are not actually planted but rather managed to promote the blueberry 
plants at the expense of other native plants. Most of the fields are on 
crownland.  The number of hives necessary is also unknown as some predict 
that more would be needed as temperatures are cooler than in other lowbush 
blueberry areas and others predict that fewer hives per hectare are needed 
as flower density is lower. For now they are predicting just the two 
northernmost producers will be needing 1200 hives come 2013.

It is doubtfull that leafcutter bees could work this area due to cool 
temperatures. Even where I'm at, which is 300 km south of Sept Iles, 
producers complain that the leaf cutting bees are not working the crop. None 
of this has been worked out yet though. At this point hives have been 
brought in by a beekeeper located a good 12 hour drive to the south.

I think the area is interesting in that there is only one road along the 
coast with long stretches of areas not fit for blueberry production so that 
any number of areas could be varroa free if only on an experimental basis. 
It might be interesting to have a source of varroa free hives for negative 
controls in varroa related research.

All the best,
Kristine

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