Photo: Honey Bee Zen and Picnic Creative

Commercial beekeepers Jeff Lee and Amanda Goodman-Lee checking on the health of their hive

Lee also owns Swan Valley Honey in Creston alongside his wife, Amanda, which produces local wildflower honey.

Peak pollination season for bees typically begins in early April and lasts until late June in B.C., although times may vary among different regions due to the different climates.

Lee said that the downside is that Canadian honey producers would be forced to take a tariff hit themselves, or get their buyers in the U.S. to pay the tariff.

This could be a hard sell for honey patrons due to the market's abundance of cheap honey from other countries.

B.C. produces around 6.3 per cent of Canada’s honey, while the prairie provinces, Alberta and Manitoba, account for a combined 59 per cent.

Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) said that ‘healthy queen bees are critical to the health and productivity of honey bee colonies’.

As the only member of a colony to lay eggs for reproduction, queens are the link between the genetics selected by bee breeders and the future bee stock working in the colony.

The situation is two-fold: if tariffs were to return, prices for consumers would increase. In addition, other countries could slow their purchase of Canadian-produced honey.

“Tariffs just aren't good for anybody on either side,” said Lee. “It's hard to get the U.S. administration to see that. Fortunately, right now, we're in a bit of a lull.”

Because B.C. and essentially all of Canada cannot make honey bee colonies early in the spring, the only way to rebuild lost colonies is to import bees from another country, and the list of countries isn’t very long.

“It’s a very reactive list,” said Lee.

In 2024, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) updated the approved countries that Canada can import bees from, which include Australia, New Zealand, Chile, Italy, Malta, Ukraine, and the U.S. (specifically California and Hawaii).

In 2023, Canadian beekeepers imported roughly 343,125 queen bees, 260,000 of which came from the U.S.

Without the queens, other sectors could be impacted if retaliatory tariffs are implemented. This could create a large gap in pollination for key crops such as cherries, apples, and blueberries.

The CHC and the BC Honey Producers Association, of which Lee is a board member, are encouraging the federal government not to impose a tariffs on the importation of queen bees if the U.S. were to reinstate theirs.

In recent years, Canada has been exporting more honey to the U.S. at higher prices. In May 2024, Canadian honey sold to the U.S. got more expensive, with the average price increasing by 14 per cent from $2.12 per lb to $2.42 per lb. Roughly 63 per cent of the country's export of honey goes to the U.S., and a combined 90 per cent goes to Japan and the U.S., according to the 2021 statistics provided by the CHC.

The simple answer would be for the country to turn their reliance away from America and to other countries, however, the European Union has set rules around genetically modified organisms (GMOs). The EU has strict regulations on GMOs that require risk assessments that include the potential impact on bees, the contamination of honey and the effects on pollinator behaviours.

Also, because the majority of Canadian honey that is exported in barrels comes from canola, it has made it more difficult for Canadian honey producers to get into the European market.

Despite Canadian honey being seen as a highly reliable product, the EU has expressed concerns about recent increases in fraudulent honey or adulterated honey, which caused a honey contest in Copenhagen to be cancelled because of the difficulty of determining the purity of entries.

Lee said that the CHC has been attending trade shows to build new relations to help become less dependent on the U.S., but as of right now, that market is stable.

The silver lining is that Canada has the opportunity to adjust their over dependence on the U.S. by diversifying its trade partners. The tariffs have caused the country to rethink some of its provincial trade regulations that have limited producers' options.

“When I think about what's positive, this is an opportunity for us to perhaps buy less American honey and put it into the Canadian market,” said Lee.

”So in some ways it's a little bit of a good story.”

Comparing the situation to a movie from 1969 called “If It’s Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium”, where the characters are so confused and they only know what day it is, he insinuated that the situation is unstable and unclear, but he is hoping for the best.

“Whether it's the Canadian honey industry or any other Canadian industry, we don’t understand what's going on.