What's the buzz? A cargo of bees arrived in Yukon

Forget snakes.

How about bees on a plane? Thousands and thousands of them?

Passengers on Monday's Air North flight from Ottawa to Whitehorse likely had no idea they were flying along with a bunch of beehives in the plane's cargo hold.

"We're just getting [the hives] now. The plan was to get them the first week in May," said Randy Lamb of Whitehorse's Downtown Urban Gardeners' Society (DUGS).

The organization received approval earlier this year from Whitehorse city council to install two hives at its community garden downtown. The goal is help vegetable and berry production, and also have a local source of honey.

The bees came to Yukon from an apiary in Ottawa, and arrived in "nuc boxes", or nucleus boxes — small bee colonies created from larger ones. 

Each nuc box might have anywhere from 10,000 to 15,000 bees inside, Lamb said.

The only setback for the gardeners so far has been the weather — in Ontario. Spring was late this year in Ottawa, and Lamb said that delayed everything, including the bees' readiness to migrate to Yukon.

"When we were having apple blossoms in Whitehorse, they were having snow flurries in the Ottawa area. So they're weeks behind us."

"We might get five or 10 pounds of honey" this year, he said. If the colonies had arrived earlier, it might have been three times as much, or more.

"But the main [thing] is to make sure the bees are healthy, they get to proper size... then next year should be a much better year for honey production."

Lamb said people have been successfully keeping honeybees in Yukon for years — the key is to ensure honey reserves are left in the hives over the winter, to help the colonies survive the cold.