Alberta's Honey Industry Keeps On Buzzing

By Elizabeth Chorney-Booth

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 farm-to-consumer honey producer and have opted for a major grocery store brand, there’s a good chance that the honey you 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.

Alberta honey is known as premium honey."

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.

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 to commercial honey packers in Canada is exported, usually to the United States or Asia.

Busy bees at Nixon Honey.

“The prairie provinces are all major exporters because in Canada, the consumption of honey is fairly low,” says Kevin Nixon of Red Deer County’s Nixon Honey, which is one of Canada’s larger beekeeping operations. “We produce millions of pounds and don’t have the population to consume it.”

In addition to the quantity, Alberta honey is also known for its quality. While our colder climate causes more natural crystallization than one may find with honey produced in South America or the southern part of the US, Alberta honey tends to have a pleasant flavour and a pretty, golden colour.

While we do certainly produce some clover honey and specialty varieties, like mint honey (through bee pollination of commercial mint farms near Medicine Hat), the vast majority of honey bees in the province are foraging pollen at least in part from our abundance of canola fields. Since bees often fly several miles from their hives to collect pollen, few beekeepers in the province can say that their bees aren’t pollinating at least some canola.

In 2016 Alberta producers accounted for 41% of Canadian honey production."

“Alberta honey is known as premium honey,” Nixon says. “The bulk is sourced from canola — Canola honey is very similar in colour and flavour to clover honey. If consumers traditionally had a liking for clover honey, they should not notice much difference in the honey produced from canola as it is still very much a premium product in the world marketplace produced right here in Alberta.”

Boxes of honey, courtesy of Bee Maid Honey Limited.

Of course, a lot of that honey does stay here in Alberta or makes it’s way to other parts of Canada. Bee Maid, for example, which is the marketing arm for the Alberta Honey Producers Co-operative and the Manitoba Cooperative Honey Producers, packs their own BeeMaid label, creates private label brands for Canadian retailers and sells directly to the food service industry.

Some beekeepers, like the Chinook Honey Company in Okotoks, have opted to take on a direct-to-consumer model, selling their own brand out of a farm store and direct to Calgary restaurants and chefs like Una Pizza + Wine, and chef Liana Robberecht at Winsport, while also offering some honey education to consumers in the process.

The Chinook Honey Company sells their brand out of a farm store and directly to restaurants and chefs.

Since the process is more complicated and yields are generally lower than the big bulk honey farmers, Chinook’s model can be riskier than the bulk honey route, but the company has diversified with its Chinook Arch Meadery and by selling items like honey-spiked jams, honey soaps and propolis (a bee by-product that has therapeutic properties) products.

“Honey is one of those great products that you can be so diverse with,” says Chinook Honey Company’s Cherie Andrews. “When you come into our shop you see the beeswax candles next to the mead. And then there’s the therapeutic uses of the hive’s ingredients, like bee pollen.”

Beekeeping can be volatile for beekeepers like Nixon too — he hedges his bets by offering pollination services to canola seed farmers — which is why we need to tip our hats to those Alberta producers when we enjoy their product.

Next time you reach for a jar of honey in the grocery store, be sure to read the fine print to make sure that you’re buying Canadian honey.

Not only will you know you’re getting the good stuff (honey from some other countries can be adulterated with added sugar), but you’ll also be supporting a local industry and an important piece of Alberta’s agricultural landscape.

Elizabeth Chorney-Booth is a Calgary-based freelance writer, who has been writing about music and food, and just about everything else for her entire adult life. Elizabeth is a published cookbook author and a regular contributor to CBC Radio.