Beekeeping in Alberta

Registering as a beekeeper in Alberta

Beekeeping registration in Canada is provincial, not federal, and the rules differ enough between provinces that advice written for one is usually wrong for the next. In Alberta the instrument is the Bee Act and the Bee Regulation (Alta Reg 194/2003), administered by the Provincial Apiculturist at the Government of Alberta.

All owners of honey bees or used beekeeping equipment must register with the Provincial Apiculturist every year.

Registration is annual and runs on a fixed cycle: approvals expire on 29 June each year, so the practical deadline is 30 June.

What else Alberta asks of you

• The application asks for your name and contact details, how many colonies you own, the municipalities where your bees or equipment sit, and, if you bought live bees in the previous twelve months, who supplied them.
• The register supports provincial disease and pest monitoring and keeps industry statistics current, which is why the colony count and supplier questions are on the form.
• A separate Premises Identification number, issued through Alberta's animal traceability program, is what gives you access to honey bee medications. Beekeeper registration alone does not.

Source: alberta.ca beekeeper registration. Rules change, and this page is a starting point rather than legal advice. Check the source before you rely on it.

Alberta beekeeping associations and swarm lists

Swarm collection in Canada mostly runs through provincial and regional associations, the same way it does in the United States. If you want swarm calls the traditional way, these are the people who keep the lists.

• Alberta Beekeepers Commission

  Provincial commission, weighted toward commercial operators.

  albertabeekeepers.ca
• Calgary District Beekeepers Association

  Calgary area club, and the only Canadian association currently routing restricted swarm reports on Swarmed.

  beeremovalcalgary.ca

When Alberta swarms

Alberta runs late and short. Every Alberta report we hold arrived in July or August, which is consistent with a prairie season that does not really begin until the second half of June and closes early. Bait hives before the end of June are unlikely to earn their keep in most of the province.

The national picture is in our swarm season report, and if you are not certain what you are looking at, the swarm identification guide covers the difference between a swarm of bees, an established nest, and wasps.

Beekeeping in Alberta by the numbers

These are Statistics Canada's figures for 2025, not ours. They cover every registered beekeeper in the province rather than the ones who happen to use Swarmed, which makes them the honest measure of how big beekeeping in Alberta actually is.

That is 38.5% of Canada's colonies and 40.7% of its honey by weight, at an average of 104 lb per colony and $2.25 a pound.

Set against that, 12 Alberta beekeepers are registered with us, or about 0.7% of the province's beekeepers. The two counts are defined differently, since Statistics Canada surveys registered operators and ours is simply whoever signed up, so read it as a rough sense of how thin our coverage is rather than a market share.

Source: Statistics Canada table 32-10-0353-01, production and value of honey, released 2026-04-29. Figures are in Canadian dollars. Yield and price are derived from the production, value and colony series rather than taken from StatCan's own yield column, which the agency has retired. The whole national series, back to 1924, is on our Canadian beekeeping data page.

What Alberta lost last winter

Alberta beekeepers lost 49.9% of their colonies over the 2021-22 winter, against a national long-run average of 28.4% across 19 winters. That is 21.5 points worse than the long-run average.

Nationally the 2024-25 winter cost 39.3%. The worst year on record is 2021-22 at 45.5% and the best is 2011-12 at 15.3%, so a single figure hides a lot: Canadian winters vary more than any other input a beekeeper here plans around.

2021-22 is the most recent winter we have a confirmed Alberta figure for. CAPA has reported more recent national numbers, but the Alberta row in those statements could not be read with enough confidence to publish, so it is left out rather than estimated.

Source: Canadian Association of Professional Apiculturists (CAPA), annual statement on honey bee wintering losses in canada. The measure is winter loss including non-viable colonies, which is not the same as colonies that died, and is not directly comparable to American or European loss surveys. Digitised from CAPA's annual PDFs, which are the only form this data is published in.

What we see in Alberta

Alberta is the clearest example of the problem this page exists to fix: reports arrive and there is almost nobody in range to take them.

We are not going to put a statistics box here. As of 2026-08-26 we hold fewer than 15 reports for Alberta, which is not enough to average anything honestly. Canada as a whole has produced 91 reports, peaking in July. What we can say about Alberta specifically is the sentence above it.

Getting swarm calls without a swarm list

A traditional swarm list is a page of phone numbers that someone updates when they remember to. Swarmed sends every beekeeper within range the same report the moment it arrives, free, and the first to claim it gets it. There is no membership, no association to join, and no waiting for your turn on a rota.

It also does not replace your association. If you are already on a club list in Alberta, being on both simply means fewer colonies get sprayed.