It was an up year for beekeepers and their busy bees in 2025 but it was not a great year by historical standards.
Honey production nationally rose 13.2% year over year to 84.1 million pounds in 2025. However, this was just over one-fifth lower than the record high of 106.6 million pounds in 2006. Four-fifths of all the honey produced in Canada in 2025 came from the Prairie provinces.
Sales of honey rose 14.8% year over year to $241.3 million in 2025. However, this was 17.5% below the record-high $283.5 million sold in 2023.
Most beekeepers since the late 1980s
In 2025, the number of beekeepers in Canada rose 6.5% year over year to 16,360, its highest level since the late 1980s and almost double the number of beekeepers compared with a decade earlier.
In 1989, varroa mites—a parasite that is one of the leading causes of bee mortality—first appeared in Canada. The higher costs associated with controlling the pest led to an exodus of beekeepers throughout the 1990s and into the mid-2000s. Varroa mites are still an issue to this day.
Pollinator bees don’t make as much honey, but they make more money
Almost two-thirds (64.5%) of the beekeepers in Canada in 2025 were in British Columbia and Ontario, despite producing only 14.1% of Canada’s honey. While they may not make as much honey as their Prairie cousins, working bees in the remaining seven provinces are by no means less busy or important.
Indeed, from a strictly monetary perspective, pollinating bees are far more valuable, contributing billions of dollars annually to Canada’s farm economy.
Bees are essential for pollinating many fruits and vegetables grown in Canada, including apples in Nova Scotia, blueberries in Quebec, veggies in Ontario and cherries in British Columbia.
Billions upon billions of bees, working away
We don’t count every working bee in Canada, but we do count colonies. In 2025, beekeepers reported tending a record-high 854,653 bee colonies.
Given that each colony can have anywhere from 25,000 to 100,000 bees depending on the time of year, that puts Canada’s working bee population somewhere from 21 billion to 85 billion bees.
Honey for all
According to our food availability release, which estimates the amount of food physically present in a country for consumption, just over 1 kilogram of honey was available for every person in Canada in 2023. Sweet!
Food availability data for 2025 will be available on May 28, 2026.
Contact information
For more information, contact the Statistical Information Service (toll-free 1-800-263-1136; 514-283-8300; infostats@statcan.gc.ca) or Media Relations (statcan.mediahotline-ligneinfomedias.statcan@statcan.gc.ca).