How Sweet it is: Beekeeping in Southwestern Alberta
Beekeepers gathering honey on July 11, 1961.
Galt Museum & Archives, 19752002002
Humans have kept honeybees for thousands of years, harvesting honey and other hive products for nutritional, medicinal and other uses. Apiculture (beekeeping) began in southern Alberta in 1909, when David Whitney installed 15 bee colonies on his “Ideal Farm” near Lethbridge. Soon after, the Dominion Experimental Farm (now Lethbridge Research Centre) established a small apiary. Harry Luther, the facility’s first beekeeper, taught local farmers how to establish their own hives and take care of bees.
As irrigation developed, alfalfa and sweet clover provided a rich source of nectar—and by the mid-1920s southern Alberta was a hive of beekeeping activity. Packaged bees, small screen cages containing eight to ten thousand bees each, were first brought to Lethbridge by train from Florida and Alabama. However, many did not survive the journey. In the mid-1920s producers started sourcing honeybees from California and by 1950 more than 100 million were being trucked into this region each year.
Three hundred tons of honey contained in 650-pound barrels were loaded into a metal rail carrier for shipment to Japan. The $100,000 shipment marked Alberta’s first major export of the product. The honey was collected by 10 southern Alberta commercial honey producers and was to be used in Japan’s honey processing facilities. Photo taken on January 14, 1971.
Galt Museum & Archives, 1991107615713
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Alberta honey producers formed a co-op in 1940 to help regulate prices as competition between beekeepers grew. At first, they shipped their raw honey to a facility in Edmonton to be packed into containers for retailing. In 1954 Alpha Dairy opened plant in Bassano, just northwest of Brooks and much closer to the large apiaries in the region. By 1969 the facility was processing some 9,000 kg of creamed honey per day—about one seventh of all honey in Canada at the time.
Today there is a mix of large commercial and small hobbyist beekeepers in southern Alberta. Hybrid canola is the dominant source of nectar, producing a light, clear honey that is among the best in the world. A small amount of local honey is consumed in Canada, while the rest is exported to other countries, notably the United States and Japan.
Dr. Frank Hamilton Mewburn was a wiry and fiery surgeon, politician, army officer, and university professor who greatly contributed to the development of Lethbridge. Mewburn came from a long ling of medical professionals, graduating from McGill University in Montreal in 1881.