- Herman Van Reekum
- Mar 22
- 5 min read
Spring Inspection: All 8 Hives Strong
On March 18, 2026, we conducted a spring inspection at the Okotoks Bee Cube®. The results couldn't be more exciting. All 8 hives came through the winter in remarkable condition, thanks to careful preparation last summer and fall: thorough mite treatments, supplemental feeding with sugar syrup, pollen, and sugar fondant through the winter months, and continuous monitoring with our sensors.
Hive-by-Hive Highlights
Hive #1 — A Historic First We discovered that this hive had a virgin queen. On March 12, she was replaced with a banked queen that had successfully overwintered in our queen bank. Remarkably, by March 18 she had already been accepted and creating brood. To my knowledge, this is the first time a banked queen introduced into a hive in mid-March has been observed laying eggs this early in our climate.
Hive #2 — Drones in March! This hive is very strong, and we spotted drones. This is a
critical indicator because early drones are essential for making early queens. Their presence in March means we can begin artificial insemination-based queen rearing this spring, weeks ahead of the typical schedule.
Hives #3 & #6 — AI Queens Overwinter These two hives each carry queens that were artificially inseminated in late summer 2025. Both queens survived the winter inside the hives and are now actively producing brood. We observed three frames of brood in each hive.
Hives #4, #5 & #8 — Ready to Split Queens in these hives were naturally raised last summer and have wintered beautifully. All three are showing heavy brood frames and are ready to be split. We will be using overwintered banked queens from Hive #7 to make new colonies — another historic milestone: overwintered hive splits in early April.
Why This Matters for Canadian Beekeeping
The central challenge facing Canadian beekeepers has long been the lack of locally produced queens and colonies early in the year. Historically, this gap has been filled by importing packaged bees and queens from warmer climates. This practice carries a biosecurity risk through the possibility of importing diseases, and mites such as varroa and tropilaelaps. It’s also becoming increasingly clear that imported queens and packages are poor in quality and not easily adapted to Alberta conditions.
What we are demonstrating at the Bee Cube® is that there is another way. Queens can be successfully banked through a Canadian winter and used to populate new hives in early spring. This is a key proof-of-concept for building a truly sustainable, self-sufficient beekeeping sector in Canada.
The Conversation in Our Community
Last week, I posed a question to the local bee club: why are we still importing bee packages? The response was telling. Many beekeepers agreed that there must be a better path. However, some long-time beekeepers pushed back, arguing that local overwintering at scale simply isn't possible and that importation is a necessity.
I respectfully disagree and we are beginning to prove it.
Experts Know the Past, Not the Future
When we hear "it can't be done," I’m reminded of a story from a very different field, one that speaks directly to this moment in beekeeping. Sebastian Thrun is the Stanford roboticist who led the team that won the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge with Stanley, a self-driving car, a feat that caught the attention of Google
co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Around 2009, Page approached Thrun with a bold ask: build a car that could drive itself anywhere in California, on real roads, in commuter traffic, at highway speeds.
Thrun, who was the world's leading expert on autonomous vehicles, turned him down flat. It couldn't be done.
Page came back the next day "OK, you say it can't be done. You're the expert. I trust you. But can you just give me one technical reason why it can't be done?"
Thrun thought about it. And then had to admit: "I can't find a technical reason."
That was the moment the Waymo project was born, and it has become one of the most consequential technology initiatives of the 21st century. Thrun later called it the most embarrassing story of his career, and distilled what he learned into a single insight: "Experts know the past, not the future."
Expertise, he realized, is a trap. It gives you confident opinions based on what has already been done but can blind you entirely to what's possible. His gut said, "can't be done," but when pressed to justify it technically, he had nothing. Page's simple question cut right through his expert bias.
Sound familiar? When long-time beekeepers tell us that overwintering queens at scale in Canada "can't be done", I ask the same question Larry Page asked: "can you give me a technical reason?"
From Proof of Concept to Commercial Reality
Here is where the Waymo story gets even more instructive because it did not stop a proving the concept. In 2026, Waymo is experiencing explosive growth. Weekly rides have surged from roughly 200,000 in early 2025 to over 400,000 by year-end, with a target of 1 million weekly rides before 2026 is out. The company now operates in 10 U.S. cities, with plans to expand to more than 20 more, plus international launches in cities like Tokyo and London. A $16 billion funding round recently valued Waymo at $126 billion which is the largest investment in autonomous vehicle history.
Waymo is no longer proving a concept. It is scaling a commercial reality.
Although we don’t have the backing of companies like Alphabet, I like to think that is where the Bee Cube® is headed. We have proven the concept: queens can be banked through a Canadian winter, introduced into hives in March, and begin laying. Overwintered colonies can be split in April. Early drones can unlock early queen rearing. The technical objections have been answered — one by one, frame by frame, hive by hive. Last year we produced more than 700 queens. We have plans to scale that dramatically in 2026 and into the future.
What's Next: Scaling Up
The exciting challenge ahead is growth. Our goal is that by next winter, we will have
significantly more Bee Cubes® and hives in operation — enough to supply queens and splits to local beekeepers early each spring and throughout the summer. Just as Waymo moved from one experimental vehicle on a California highway to a global fleet serving hundreds of thousands of riders a week, we intend to move from 8 hives in Okotoks to a network that can meaningfully change how Canadian beekeeping is supplied.
The question is no longer whether it can be done. It is how fast we can scale.
A heartfelt thank you to our master beekeepers, Nazar and Natalia Pukshyn, who have pushed the Bee Cube® to its fullest potential and are showing the way toward a sustainable Canadian beekeeping future.
This project was made possible with the assistance of funding from Results Driven Agriculture Research (RDAR).
