President's Report

As we head into April, I am always a bit nervous and excited with what the bees will look like after a long Alberta winter. It seems they have made it through the harsh conditions, and they should be good to go now but we know we aren’t completely done with the cold.

I have had a busy winter going to meetings and doing different board related trips. In early January I had the privilege of representing the Canadian Honey Council (CHC) in Florida for the American Beekeepers Federation (ABF) meeting. CHC had a booth at the ABF trade show. The booth provided an opportunity to network and meet with beekeepers from across the U.S.. There were great topics covered by speakers ranging from foraging research to an update by Dr. Samuel Ramsey on the Tropilaelaps mite. It’s great to discuss issues and ideas with beekeepers from different regions and learn about different challenges and opportunities across our industry, and how we share some similarities, and other things are drastically different.

Later in January I was able to attend the CHC Annual General Meeting and meeting of the Canadian Association of Professional Apiculturists (CAPA) in St. John’s Newfoundland. As a departing director of CHC it was nice to attend as we had good discussions and reports from/with researchers and industry stakeholders. It was an absolute pleasure to be a director on the CHC board, and I do feel that they have an excellent Board and Executive Director that are capable of handling whatever the industry is facing moving forward.

Then in early March, I traveled to Japan for the Food Ex show. Here we were able to promote Canadian honey to buyers not only from Japan, but also many other countries that attended. We handed out lots of copies of the export catalogue as well as many Canadian honey samples. I did have the privilege of meeting Mary Beth Takao who works in the Alberta Japan office, she is extremely knowledgeable and was very helpful to us. We can be thankful as a province to have someone like Mary Beth working for us in Japan. As it isn’t always easy to tell exactly what the payback is on these trips, I feel that the exposure is great for our product and the feedback was positive. Hopefully we can keep working through the challenges and keep Japan as our largest export market.

As we head into spring, I wish everyone all the best. Hopefully we find good healthy bees this spring and head into an exciting and prosperous year. If anyone has any concerns or suggestions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to any of us board members or staff.