Hiebert Honey Farms in Kleefeld has just built new beekeeping facilities as the Canadian honey industry grows.

According to Statistics Canada honey production in the country increased by 11.4% from 2014 to 2015. Even though yield was down in Manitoba the total volume of honey sold went up 11.8% from 14.1 million pounds in 2014 to 16 million pounds in 2015. Statistics Canada suggests this increase can be attributed to more honey-producing colonies in 2015.

Jac Hiebert of Hiebert Honey Farms says they have been growing steadily since their beginning in 1999. He notes he and his wife were planning to start in the bee business as a retirement hobby and now they are a full fledged business and their son has joined on as a partner. He adds they recently built new facilities for their beekeeping.

“We had been growing and we were squeezed out of our older facilities that we had leased for the last 10 years. We also needed to build a facility that would meet today's food standards. We put it all together, needing the volume, needing the room, needing the safe food we decided to go ahead and set up new facilities.”

Hiebert says their new building has extracting equipment, a small shop, storage for their summer equipment, and temperature controlled winter storage where they house over 1400 colonies from the beginning of November until the beginning of April. He notes they spent most of the summer building the new facilities and haven't been able to fully use them yet.

“We haven't operated out of our new facilities. We built it this summer, but we didn't get it ready in time for the extraction, so we are quite anxious and looking forward to 2016 where we can actually use the stuff that we have put together in 2015.”

Hiebert says the honey business in Canada has been growing as the price of honey in the last few years has been very strong. He says Hiebert Honey Farms produces as much as 257,000 pounds of honey a year. He notes the 2015 season was a down on yield by about 15% because excessive rain days and the smoke from the wild fires meant there were more no-fly days for the bee's then usual.

Hiebert says the bee's themselves have been very healthy.

“They have been stronger the last two years. We had a few years three or four years ago where we had a few viruses that came in that were transferred by mites, and they can be quite devastating. Iin the last two years the bee's have been stronger in general.”

According to Hiebert beekeepers have to work in a tight partnership with farmers.

“We never get turned down when we go to a farmer and ask if we can put up our honey bees. The farmer has canola fields, that plant also needs pollination. If we put in 32 hives at about 60 or 70 thousand bee's per hive it is a plus to the farmer, and in return we get the nectar for the honey.”

Hiebert says all indications show they will have a very strong 2016.