Cortes Island Museum ZOOM AGM

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - The Cortes Island Museum ZOOM AGM is this Sunday, April 25th, at 1:30 PM.

As managing Director Jane Newman explained, “The only other I would love to tell people is that we have an AGM coming up. We have a really fascinating speaker, Gordon Cyr of Mason Bee Central, who lives over in Back Creek and he is a North American champion of Mason Bees. He is really, really engaged. His family has a business building bee houses and educating people about mason bees and their importance as a pollinator.”

On Cyr’s website, Bee Canadian.ca it says “Most home orchards and gardens can be well pollinated with as little as 50 Orchard mason bees. Each female can visit up to 2,000 blossoms a day. One acre of a commercial apple orchard can be pollinated with approximately 250 female Orchard mason bees.”

A description of the Cyr family business is given under the About us tab,

“Our staff is 1 husband , 1 wife, 2 kids,1 cat and a group of volunteers. We have been raising Mason bees for about 20 years; it has been a huge learning process.”

For the first several years we enjoyed successes and suffered through failures, learning from both. We started supplying friends, family and neighbours and the growing interest in Mason bees inspired the creation of a website. We have been selling Mason bees and Mason bee homes online since 2007, currently available at masonbeecentral.com.”

“In 2019 our rental program filled the pollination needs of over 600 homeowners and 3 commercial orchards in the Campbell River, Courtney area and produced 180,000 Mason bees. Our ever-increasing amount of Mason bees allows us to expand our service to the South Island.”

“Our rental program now services Vancouver Islanders from Campbell River to Victoria.”

“In 2015 we won NEDC’s “Best Environmental and Sustainable Business of the Year Award” and in 2018 Honorable Mention in NAPPC “Pollinator Advocate Award Canada” category.”

Mason Bee Central offers mason bee kits for rent, starting at $20/year, to help gardeners increase their crop yields.

You do not have to be a member to attend the AGM, but you would not be permitted to vote unless you are a member.

“Having said that, it is very easy to become a member of the museum and we are really encouraging anybody that may have been a member in the past three or four years has been a member, but for some reason has not visited or felt like this was something they would follow through with. We are looking to rebuild our membership and bring it back to what it was in 2019. As we did lose members through the pandemic year,” said Newman.

She added, “There are so many ways you can become a member, just by volunteering time, by volunteering money, and if you have done any of those things prior to the AGM you can vote on the things that need to be decided.”