Okanagan Pollinators and HEAT
- FTFO
- Jul 27
- 2 min read
Updated: Jul 28
by Heather Clay, member of Climate Action Now! North Okanagan July 20, 2026
Our climate is changing faster than any period in the history of the planet.
It’s a result of human activity and we know how to stop it.
Inaction costs us more every day, from fire insurance to food prices we pay for burning fossil fuels.
In April, the Okanagan Snow Basin Index was 58 per cent of normal, representing the lowest on record (BC River Forecast Centre).
By June the Okanagan’s snowpack was at two per cent of normal.
We are in a long-term drought and water restrictions have been triggered.
Farmers are rightfully concerned about the consequences.
Our agricultural system is under severe stress from climate change.
Extreme heat affects food production but a hidden cost is the loss of pollinators.
Just ask the bees.
Honey bees are important contributors to the production of food crops.
Without bees we would have very few fruits, nuts, vegetables, oilseeds to eat or legumes to feed animals.
Honeybees, along with other pollinators, suffer silently as temperatures climb.
On hot days honeybees actively cool their hive to between 35 to 37 degrees. They instinctively air condition the hive by fanning their wings to circulate air and create cooling by evaporation.
If the hive temperature reaches 38 degrees, the bees switch into emergency mode and stop gathering nectar.
Worker bees cluster on the outside of the hive rather than adding more heat to the inside.
Some foragers begin collecting droplets of water which they spread through the hive to assist cooling. This means the colony is in survival mode and no longer pollinating plants or making honey.
Honeybees are resilient but they have a limit.
Dr. Alison McAfee, a researcher at University of British Columbia, found that extreme heat has multiple effects on honeybees.
She proved that a queen bee becomes infertile in extreme heat.
Her work showed that heat kills semen and since a queen bee stores all the semen she needs to fertilize future eggs, her fertility plummets when temperatures exceed 40 degrees.
McAfee also found that half of drones (male bees) die within six hours when exposed to 42 degrees.
Beeswax starts to slump at 42 degrees and mass colony death occurs at 46 degrees.
Bees are like the canary in the coal mine. If they are suffering so are other pollinators like butterflies, moths, beetles and wasps.
The resulting food shortages have already begun to cause human suffering and drive up our cost of living.
Our climate is heading towards intolerable extremes and the blame falls squarely on the shoulders of government.
We cannot support pipeline expansion and expect improvement.
As Tzeporah Berman, founder and chair of the Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative, points out, “subsidizing planting trees and carbon capture storage while expanding oil and gas is like drinking carrot juice in the morning and smoking a pack of cigarettes a day and saying they cancel each other out. Life doesn’t work like that.”
If you care about our food supply and your children’s future make sure you press politicians at every level of government for meaningful climate action.
Heather Clay is a member of Climate Action Now! North Okanagan
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