Swarmed data # Beekeeping in Canada , 1924 to 2025 Canada has 16,360 beekeepers keeping 854,653 colonies, and they produced 84.1 million pounds of honey worth $241 million in 2025. Statistics Canada has counted them every year since 1924. This is what the century looks like. 16,360 beekeepers up 105% in 20 years 854,653 colonies 84.1M lb honey produced 98 lb per colony $2.87 per pound, Canadian dollars $241M farm value ## Canada has twice the beekeepers it had twenty years ago, and a third of what it had in 1945 The number of Canadian beekeepers bottomed out at 6,931 in 2008 and has climbed to 16,360 since. That is a real recovery, and it is also still only 38% of the 43,340 beekeepers Canada had in 1945, when wartime sugar rationing put a hive in a great many back gardens. Colony numbers have moved far less than beekeeper numbers, which is the more interesting half. The growth is in small operations, not in hives: Canada gained roughly 8,389 beekeepers over those twenty years without a matching jump in colonies, so the average operation is getting smaller and there are many more people with a few hives than there used to be. ## The last six years Yield per colony is the volatile line, not price and not colony count. A bad summer costs Canadian beekeepers more than a bad market does. Year | Beekeepers | Colonies | Production | lb/colony | $/lb CAD 2020 | 11,994 | 764,616 | 83.2M lb | 109 | $2.40 2021 | 13,391 | 834,262 | 88.1M lb | 106 | $3.05 2022 | 14,354 | 766,874 | 74.4M lb | 97 | $3.44 2023 | 14,938 | 809,304 | 95.6M lb | 118 | $2.96 2024 | 15,355 | 839,712 | 74.2M lb | 88 | $2.83 2025 | 16,360 | 854,653 | 84.1M lb | 98 | $2.87 2022 was the smallest Canadian harvest since 2009. 2023 was the largest in the table and 2024 the worst per colony, a swing of 30 pounds a hive in a single season. ## Where the bees are Canadian beekeeping is two different industries wearing one name. Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba run large commercial operations on prairie canola: Alberta alone holds 38% of the country's colonies with 1,630 beekeepers. Ontario and British Columbia have the most beekeepers and far fewer hives each, which is what a hobbyist and sideliner base looks like. Province | Beekeepers | Colonies | Hives each | Production | Share of colonies [Alberta](/beekeeping/alberta) | 1,630 | 329,000 | 202 | 34.2M lb | 38.5% Manitoba | 1,015 | 119,000 | 117 | 17.9M lb | 13.9% [Ontario](/beekeeping/ontario) | 5,195 | 118,109 | 23 | 7.8M lb | 13.8% Saskatchewan | 1,115 | 92,000 | 83 | 14.9M lb | 10.8% [British Columbia](/beekeeping/british-columbia) | 5,356 | 88,068 | 16 | 4.0M lb | 10.3% [Quebec](/beekeeping/quebec) | 528 | 69,917 | 132 | 4.5M lb | 8.2% Nova Scotia | 931 | 27,731 | 30 | 0.4M lb | 3.2% New Brunswick | 550 | 6,800 | 12 | 0.3M lb | 0.8% Prince Edward Island | 40 | 4,028 | 101 | 0.1M lb | 0.5% ## Canadian beekeepers lost 39.3% of their colonies last winter Against a long-run average of 28.4% across 19 winters since 2006-07. Winter loss is the number Canadian beekeepers actually argue about, and it swings harder than anything else here: the worst winter on record, 2021-22, took 45.5% of the country's colonies, and the best, 2011-12, took 15.3%. CAPA's preliminary figure for 2025-26 is 34%, which is provisional and gets revised in the final statement. Winter | National loss | Against the 28.4% average 2024-25 | 39.3% | +10.9 points 2023-24 | 34.6% | +6.2 points 2022-23 | 32.2% | +3.8 points 2021-22 | 45.5% | +17.1 points 2020-21 | 23.2% | -5.2 points 2019-20 | 30.2% | +1.8 points 2018-19 | 25.7% | -2.7 points 2017-18 | 32.6% | +4.2 points 2016-17 | 25.1% | -3.3 points 2015-16 | 16.8% | -11.6 points Source: Canadian Association of Professional Apiculturists (CAPA), [annual statement on honey bee wintering losses in canada](https://capabees.com/capa-statement-on-honey-bees/). The measure is winter loss including non-viable colonies, which is not the same as colonies that died and is not comparable to American or European loss surveys without checking each definition. CAPA publishes these only as annual PDFs; this series was digitised from them, and its long-run average reproduces the figure CAPA itself publishes. ## What we can and cannot add to this Everything above is Statistics Canada's work, not ours. Our own Canadian footprint is small enough to state in one sentence: 131 registered beekeepers as of 2026-08-26, which is under one percent of the 16,360 StatCan counts. We are not going to dress that up as a national dataset. What our own reports can date, because it needs timing rather than volume, is the season. Canadian swarm reports peak in July, roughly six to eight weeks later than the American season, which is in our [swarm season report](/season). Province by province, including what each one requires of a registered beekeeper, is on [beekeeping in Canada](/beekeeping). [Get swarm alerts near you](/auth/beekeeper-signup) ## Source and method All figures from [Statistics Canada table 32-10-0353-01](https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=3210035301), production and value of honey, released 2026-04-29 and retrieved 2026-08-26, used under the Statistics Canada Open Licence. Values are Canadian dollars and are not adjusted for inflation or converted to any other currency. Yield per colony and price per pound are derived here from the production, value and colony series. StatCan publishes its own average-yield series but has flagged it terminated, so it is not used. The territories do not appear because StatCan does not report them. Statistics Canada's Census of Agriculture reports a different colony count for the same years, on a different definition; the two are not mixed here.