Protecting bees. Supporting beekeepers. Sustaining Canadian food.
Who we are
The Canadian Beekeepers Federation is a national organisation run by working commercial beekeepers. Its members produce honey and pollinate crops across the country. They run their own operations through the full working year: wintering colonies, making splits in spring, moving hives to pollination, pulling the honey crop. The CBF works for healthy bees, honey integrity, fair market access, and recognition of pollination as essential to Canada’s food security. Its positions come from the people who do the work.
The beekeepers who direct the CBF, and the operations they run, are on the Directors page.
Canada’s honey bees are a critical part of agriculture and necessary for food security.
What we work on
Bee health
Beekeepers rebuild a large share of their colonies every year. The losses come in winter and in summer both, and they are higher than the industry can sustain. Canada doesn’t measure colony loss well enough to put one number on it; the CBF’s position paper sets out the measurement problem and what better measurement would look like. Healthy bees are the foundation of everything else here, from the honey crop to the pollination Canadian agriculture depends on.
Honey integrity and fair market access
Adulterated honey, cut with added sugars, enters Canada in imported product. CFIA’s own testing has documented this on multiple occasions. The Canadian honey was clean. The problem is a system where surveillance is not enough and the penalties are too small to deter this fraud. Canadian beekeepers compete against imported honey that isn’t required to be verified as genuine.
Most of the honey Canadians eat is not in a jar. It goes into sauces, baked goods and other processed foods as an ingredient, and most of the honey in that ingredient market is imported. Canadian honey, at the farm gate or on the grocery shelf, is not the problem. The CBF works for import controls that test the product, and for market rules that hold imports to the same standard Canadian producers already meet.
Pollination and Canada’s food security
Crops from canola to blueberries depend on honey bee pollination. Commercial pollination is an essential part of Canadian agriculture and essential to Canada’s food security. The CBF works for that recognition in Canadian agricultural policy.
Executive Director
Connie Phillips, Executive Director
780-289-5604
cdnbeefedoffice@gmail.com