Canada is relying on queen bee imports. Why it’s a risky crutch

WRITTEN BY Katie Dangerfield Global News, Published May 25, 2024

Searching for the Queen in the Bee Cube.

Chilean queen bees, known for their gentle demeanour and exceptional honey production, are the preferred choice for Winnipeg beekeeper Rebecca Krowelski, who imports them nearly every year for her hive.

“Early spring I often get queens imported and I find Chilean queens overwinter really well,” she said.

A queen bee that overwinters well is vital for a hive’s survival and spring productivity. She ensures the colony’s stability and continuity into the warmer months by remaining healthy through the harsh winter, Krowelski explained.

But this is a common problem for Canadian beekeepers. The country’s cold winters can be harsh, and some queen bees may not survive the season. And it’s not just the harsh winters that are a concern. Declining bee health is wiping out colonies at a faster rate than ever before.

A solution to this dilemma, though one that many believe Canadian beekeepers rely on too heavily, is importing queen bees from warmer countries like Chile, New Zealand, Australia and the southern United States. It’s a practice that beekeepers have needed to rely on more and more over the last few decades. But some experts are sounding the alarm on the risks associated of this reliance.

While importing queen bees can mitigate some winter losses, Krowelski emphasized that the advantages of raising her own queens often outweigh importing them from abroad, provided beekeepers have the time and resources to do so. "I do like importing my queens, but I also love raising my own queens," Krowelski said, who has 10 hives in a Winnipeg suburban neighbourhood and sells her honey at farmers' markets.

“Local queens are the best because we know they overwinter well as they’re acclimatized to our winters, and so that’s one of the biggest benefits,” she explained. “You also choose what you’re selecting, so you look for hygiene and you look for qualities or traits that you want in your queens. Raising my own queens means I don’t have to pay money for them as I use my own resources.”

She noted that this approach may suit small hobbyists like herself, as only a handful of queens are needed. However, commercial farmers may need to explore more efficient methods. Read fulll story

The Brood Factory

Honeybees, like all insects, go through a metamorphosis as they develop from egg to adult. Queens can lay up to 3000 eggs per day. The eggs are deposited at the bottom of a honeycomb cell and are attended by nurse bees for three days. The egg becomes larva and, after about nine days the nurse bees cap the cell with wax. The larva turns vinto pupa inside their covered cells and emerge as adult bees after 21 days in the case of female bees and 24 days for drones.

A healthy queen surrounded by hundreds of attendant bees will produce far more eggs than are needed for the hive to survive and beekeepers use the extra brood to create new hives. Beekeepers take frames of brood and some nurse bees, put them into a separate box, add a new queen and move it to a new location to create an entirely new colony of honeybees.

Frames of brood are a valuable lifeforce and beekeepers who want to grow their apiaries will make as many new hives as possible without weakening the original hives. Depending on the weather conditions in the spring, hives can be split once or twice.

Our first Bee Cube™ now has 32 beehives, and they are thriving. We purposely put the bees into smaller nucleus boxes which have five frames so that we could easily remove frames of brood without weakening the original colonies. Our plan now is to split all the hives by early June. We will use the new colonies to populate our second Bee Cube™ and sell any surplus colonies to local beekeepers.

We will then wait another few weeks and split the hives again. The Bee Cube™ has an ideal internal environment which allows the bees to focus on creating brood instead of using their energy to survive in unpredictable spring weather conditions. We’ve essentially created a ‘brood factory’ which supports the propagation of bees which, in turn, will help the local bee industry become more self-sustaining.

Our second Bee Cube™ is being built and should be ready in early June. Stay tuned for new developments and sign up for our newsletter. www.beecube.io

Herman Van Reekum

May 31, 2024

The Bee Cube™ is Live!

We’re happy to announce that our first prototype Bee Cube™ has been built and is now filled with 20 honeybee colonies.

Our prototype was built by two very talented builders, Chase and Hugh McNeil of

McNeil Homes. We used wood wherever possible to allow for changes to be made on the fly as we thought about how to integrate beehives into a small structure. We also decided to fill the Bee Cube™ with smaller ‘nuc’ boxes instead of regular Langstroth hives so that we could develop processes to maximize colony splitting and queen rearing.

The primary purpose of the Bee Cube™ is to support beekeepers who want to split

colonies and raise queens to replace colonies that die through the winter or to add to their colony numbers. Beekeepers now rely primarily on imports of honeybees from foreign sources which is costly and increases the potential to import diseases and pests. Our goal is to become leaders in the development of a sustainable beekeeping industry in North America.

Our next steps are to add a solar powered, remote controlled HVAC system to the Bee Cube™ and to integrate a range of sensors to provide data on temperature, humidity, sound, weight, and CO2 levels to beekeepers who operate the Bee Cube.

I’ve been working on this idea for the past three years and it feels good to finally have the first prototype established. I’ve had a lot of help along the way and I’m grateful to all the people who have been supporting me. It’s been a busy week, but we got it done!

Herman Van Reekum

April 30, 2024