Going into Winter

Calgary was hit by a severe snowstorm this week, and we were grateful to have completed all of our winter preparations in the Bee Cubes® and traditional hives before it arrived. This season, we’re overwintering 7 Bee Cubes® and 20 traditional hives going into winter.

One of our Bee Cubes® houses our queen banking experiment, where we’re overwintering queen bees at scale. The remaining Bee Cubes® are being used to test different sensor and heating systems as part of our ongoing research into how technology can improve winter survival and overall hive health.

The Challenge of Canadian Winters

Honeybees are not native to Canada. The bees most commonly used here are Carniolan bees from Slovenia and Italian bees bred for the milder Mediterranean climate. Helping them survive a Canadian winter is an ongoing challenge especially given the persistent threat of Varroa mites, a parasite that is impossible to fully eradicate.

Winter losses in Canada often range between 30% and 50%, forcing beekeepers to rebuild their colonies each spring. To do so, many rely on imported bees from countries such as New Zealand and Australia.

A Turning Point for the Industry

This year, the Canadian beekeeping industry has taken a bold step by asking the federal government to ban bee imports from all countries except the United States. The reason: the emergence of a new and even more devastating parasite called Tropilaelaps, which is spreading internationally and poses a major biosecurity risk to Canadian hives.

Read more from the National Post

While this ban would help protect our bees from new diseases, it also means we must build our own domestic capacity to replace approximately 45,000 imported bee packages and 300,000 imported queens each year. Many of these queens currently come from Chile, Italy, New Zealand, and Australia.

Testing for Varroa

The Role of the Bee Cube®

After two years of development, the Bee Cube® has proven to be a powerful tool for queen rearing and colony development. By controlling temperature, humidity, and ventilation inside the Cube, we can shield colonies from external weather fluctuations and help bees focus their energy on brood rearing and queen production.

We’re now working closely with government and industry partners to design a roadmap for a more self-sufficient, sustainable Canadian beekeeping sector, one that reduces our dependence on imported bees and supports the long-term health of honeybee populations across the country.

In 2025, we successfully produced several hundred mated queens with the help of queen-rearing experts Natalia and Nazar Pukshyn, who brought their deep experience from Ukraine and Poland to our Alberta operations. Most queens were used in our own colonies, but many went to Alberta beekeepers who gave excellent feedback on performance and reliability.