For beekeepers
Beekeeping by province and state
Registering a hive is compulsory in both Canada and Australia, and in neither country is it federal. Ontario issues a three-year certificate for free, Alberta runs an annual cycle that expires every 29 June, Western Australia registers you for three years and assigns a hive brand, and South Australia makes you renew every twelve months. Advice written for one jurisdiction is usually wrong for the next.
Choose your province
Four provinces to begin with. If these earn their place we will write the rest.
Australia, state by state
Australia has enough reports to put numbers on the page, so these carry live figures rather than a snapshot. Ordered by reported swarms per registered beekeeper, which measures how little competition there is rather than how many bees live there.
| State | Reports | Beekeepers | Per beekeeper | Varroa |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| South Australia | 200 | 11 | 18.2 | Present |
| Western Australia | 197 | 12 | 16.4 | Not detected |
| Victoria | 219 | 56 | 3.9 | Present |
| Australian Capital Territory | 166 | 51 | 3.3 | Present |
| New South Wales | 782 | 463 | 1.7 | Present |
| Queensland | 95 | 66 | 1.4 | Present |
Tasmania and the Northern Territory are not listed. Registration is compulsory there too, but we hold too few reports to describe the picture honestly, and a rate built on a handful of them moves every time one more arrives.
The Canadian season runs later than the American one
Canadian swarm reports peak in July, where the American season peaks between April and June. A beekeeper working from American swarm advice will put bait hives out roughly six to eight weeks early. Our swarm season report covers the continental picture, and the identification guide covers telling a swarm of bees from a nest or from wasps.
As of 2026-08-26 we hold 91 Canadian swarm reports from 131 registered Canadian beekeepers. That is a thin base and we say so on each page rather than averaging it into something that looks more solid than it is.