In Canada, the cold weather presents challenges for beekeepers, as highlighted in a 2025 report by the Canadian Association of Professional Apiculturists, which revealed that more than 41% of honeybee colonies in Alberta failed during that winter.
To address this issue, Beekeeping Innovations Ltd., based in the Calgary area, has introduced an innovative solution known as the Bee Cube. This apiary features a fully climate-controlled environment capable of accommodating multiple honeybee colonies, with its design originating in Okotoks.
Herman Van Reekum, the founder and CEO of the company, explained that the objective of the Bee Cube is to provide bees with a comfortable environment to survive the winter successfully. Moreover, the Bee Cube offers a unique opportunity that could revolutionize Canada’s beekeeping industry.
Van Reekum emphasized the significance of the Bee Cube in facilitating the production of queens in a safe and cost-effective manner. By creating a domestic source of queens, Canadian beekeepers can reduce their reliance on importing foreign queen bees, which currently amounts to approximately 300,000 annually from countries like Australia, New Zealand, California, and Hawaii.
Imported bees not only struggle to adapt to the new environment but also bring the risk of introducing harmful pests like varroa mites. Van Reekum expressed concerns about the potential threat of the Tropilaelaps mite, which, if introduced to North America, could cause significant devastation to local honeybee populations.
By breeding local queens, beekeepers can lower mite infection rates and develop bees with genetic resilience to survive the harsh Canadian winters. Van Reekum highlighted the importance of nurturing queens that have successfully endured a Canadian winter to pass on robust genes to future generations.
The process of creating queens involves selecting and feeding a larva royal jelly, which triggers its development into a queen bee. Each hive typically has only one queen, as multiple queens cannot coexist peacefully. To produce more queens, beekeepers transfer “queen cells” into colonies without existing queens and carefully monitor their emergence and maturation process.
Furthermore, Alberta stands out as Canada’s primary honey producer, with nearly 40% of the country’s bee colonies located in the province. The honey industry in Canada, valued at $241 million in 2025, plays a vital role in supporting agriculture through pollination services, contributing significantly to the economy.
Van Reekum underscored the essential role of honeybees in pollinating crops, emphasizing that a significant portion of the food consumed relies on bees for pollination, including canola, orchards, and blueberries.
Overall, initiatives like the Bee Cube offer promising solutions to enhance beekeeping practices in Canada, ensuring the sustainability and vitality of honeybee populations essential for agriculture and food production.