For beekeepers in Ontario
Beekeeping in Ontario
What the Bees Act asks of you, which associations keep swarm lists, and how to get swarm calls without waiting for one.
Registering as a beekeeper in Ontario
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 Ontario the instrument is The Bees Act (R.S.O. 1990, c. B.6) and its regulation, administered by the Apiary Program at the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Agribusiness, under the Provincial Apiarist.
Anyone who owns or is in possession of honey bees or used beekeeping equipment in Ontario needs a valid certificate of registration. There is no charge for it.
Registration is free. Beekeepers with fewer than 50 colonies at the time they register are issued a certificate valid for three calendar years, and the Apiary Program sends renewal reminders between the last week of October and the first week of November.
What else Ontario asks of you
- Colonies may not sit within 30 metres of a property line that separates the hive location from land carrying a dwelling, community centre, public park or place of public assembly, and may not sit within 10 metres of a highway.
- Pests and disease must be reported to a local apiary inspector immediately, and may not be concealed or moved within the province.
- Apiary inspectors may inspect colonies, equipment and records, and may enter premises other than dwellings between sunrise and sunset to take samples.
- Selling live bees, transferring ownership, or importing bees from another province or country requires a valid apiary permit.
Source: ontario.ca beekeeper registration. Rules change, and this page is a starting point rather than legal advice. Check the source before you rely on it.
Ontario 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.
- Ontario Beekeepers' Association
Provincial body, technology transfer program, and the usual first stop for a new Ontario beekeeper.
ontariobee.com - Eastern Ontario Beekeepers Association
Regional club covering the eastern counties.
eoba.ca - Upper Ottawa Beekeepers' Association
Ottawa valley club.
uovba.ca - Ontario Finger Lakes Beekeepers Association
Ontario County club.
ontariocountybeekeepers.org
When Ontario swarms
Ontario swarms run from the second half of May into September, later than most of the United States. Our own Ontario reports cluster in August, and Canada as a whole peaks in July against an American peak in April to June. In practice that means bait hives out by mid May in the south of the province, and a swarm season that is still live when American beekeepers have finished theirs.
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 Ontario 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 Ontario actually is.
That is 13.8% of Canada's colonies and 9.3% of its honey by weight, at an average of 66 lb per colony and $5.20 a pound.
Set against that, 52 Ontario beekeepers are registered with us, or about 1% 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 Ontario lost last winter
Ontario beekeepers lost 37.3% of their colonies over the 2024-25 winter, against a national long-run average of 28.4% across 19 winters. That is 8.9 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.
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 Ontario
Ontario is one of two provinces where Swarmed already works the way it is meant to: reports arrive, several beekeepers get alerted, and someone nearby is usually free to go.
Read from our own reports on 2026-08-26, out of 91 across Canada. Reports and swarms are counted separately on purpose: 15 of Ontario's 28 were established colonies inside a structure rather than a cluster in the open, which is a different job and often a paid one. These are small numbers and we would rather say so than dress them up.
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 Ontario, being on both simply means fewer colonies get sprayed.