From swarming around garbage cans, to buzzing around people at a proximity a little too close for comfort, bees and wasps are seemingly everywhere lately.
While a recent truck-tipping catastrophe on a Toronto road, which released five million bees into the abyss, may be one theory for the bee increase, one expert has other ideas.
According to Laurence Parker, professor of biology at York University and author of “Keeping the Bees,” yellowjacket wasps become more attentive to things like food and barbeques in late summer months, hence the increased presence of bees this September.
“Their normal insect prey decreases in abundance [in late summer] relative to their needs, as the colony reaches peak numbers,” Parker told Now Toronto. “I expect that’s it.”
Meaning, there may be an imbalance of supply and demand which leads the bees to search for more prey. This might explain their unwelcome visits to garbage cans and food.
“If the issue is very large and brown wasps, those are hornets that are invasive, have been in North America for some time,” Parker adds, “and seem to be increasingly common in Toronto.”
Despite this, researchers at York University have found that Canada’s wild pollinators are in decline and may be heading for extinction. This could include the endangered American bumble bee, which is a species once more commonly seen in Southern Ontario.
In 2020, Canadian bees produced approximately 82 million pounds of honey, which equaled over $208 million in value to the Canadian economy, according to Agriculture Canada.
So, while they may be cause for some irritation, they do contribute to society in more ways than one, it appears.
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