All about bees!

Our guest speaker this week was  John Gibeau  who is with the Rotary Club of Cloverdale.  John is a retired policeman who is now a full time beekeeper with the Honeybee Centre - 176th and Fraser Highway in Surrey.  They rent honeybees to farmers for pollination of their crops - mainly blueberries.  The Centre owns 1400 bee hives and imports more from Alberta when needed.  Did you know that honey from flowers tastes different than honey from fruit?  They sell many different kinds of honey in a retail shop.  Wholesale prices for honey have increased in the past 6 years from 75 cents a pound to $2.00 a pound.  The center also has 400 school tours a year, and they are one of 3 centres in North America that work with the film industry - usually covering actors in bees.  They are also active in Bee Philanthropy - taking bees to developing countries.  Our club member Jag went to Ethiopia with them to do an assessment.  They start by qualifying a village through a survey, then train the villagers for 3 weeks and follow up 1 year later.  Funds are advanced in four phases and the village becomes independent once they export honey.