Alberta’s Honey Industry Keeps On Buzzing by ELIZABETH CHORNEY-BOOTH
Nixon Honey
So many of us take special care to stay local when it comes to fresh vegetables, ranch-raised meat and even processed foodstuff. But many Albertans may not know where their honey comes from. Take a look in your pantry — even if you don’t have a jar from a boutique farmto-consumer honey producer and have opted for a major grocery store brand, there’s a good chance that the honey you 16
spread on your toast or stirred into your tea this morning was produced in Alberta. Since honey production is dependent on weather and the viability of pollination crops like canola and alfalfa, the amount of honey produced in Alberta varies year in and year out, but most years we take the crown as Canada’s largest producer of the sticky stuff. According to Statistics Canada, in 2016 Alberta producers accounted for 41% of Canadian honey production. There are over 300,000 bee colonies in our province – spread among about 1,400 independent beekeepers. Those bees
keep plenty busy: in 2016, the province produced a whopping 38 million pounds of honey.
Alberta honey is known as premium honey That’s a lot of honey, and despite the ongoing trend towards substituting honey for refined sugar, it’s much more honey than Albertans — or even Canadians in general — can reasonably eat. This means that Albertan honey that isn’t sold direct to consumers by beekeepers or in bulk
