We are a small family run bee farm located in the Calmar, Alberta area. Our bee farm began when we started hobby beekeeping. After a few successful years, we could see that Alberta beekeepers were vastly relying on a foreign supply of queens and bee packages. This situation would make many operations unsustainable if imports became restricted. For this, we started looking for a better way to manage our growing apiaries.
During the 2014 season we started to implement what we believed would be the answer to becoming a sustainable apiary. The solution was to stop relying on foreign imports of queens and start producing our own. Not only did we need to produce our own local queens but we also needed to overwinter them to become self sustaining and productive.
Today our apiaries have grown to include several hundred nucleus and production colonies, as well as our own queen rearing system. Having now had success with our sustainable apiary we knew we could help reduce Alberta's need for importing large amounts of bees. We may be a small operation but we believe we have something important to offer Alberta beekeepers.
Barb Sorenson Retail & Honey production
Born: Edmonton Age: Older Interests: grandchildren, gardening and homesteading.
Having spent many years looking for her calling, in 2012 Barb ordered her very first bee package. Since then she has fallen in love with honey bees and what they have to offer. Deciding to take her beekeeping skills to a new level she enrolled and graduated from the commercial beekeeping coarse at the Kwantlen Polytechnic University in Surrey, BC.
In addition to tending to the bees, Barb answers our phone and responds to inquiries. You will see her at local markets and our Calmar pick up location when she is not in the bee yards.
Justin Sorenson Wholesale Honey & Bees
Born: Edmonton Age: 34 Interests: fishing, outdoors/camping and nature
Justin graduated from NAIT's 2 year business program, which has helped create the foundation of our operation. Prior to beekeeping, he was no stranger to insects, and spent many years researching, removing wasp nests and playing with ant formicariums. While researching homesteading techniques in 2008, he stumbled across beekeeping and quickly realized the potential it had to offer. Since then he has soaked up everything and anything bee related. Justin continues to follow the pioneer beekeepers like Brother Adam, Charles Mraz, C.C. Miller and more recently Michael Palmer, Randy Oliver, Barry Teemer, to name a few.
Justin manages our bee operations and deals with wholesale honey and online sales.
The rest of our team is made up of family members that help out behind the scenes as much as possible during honey flows and winter construction. We could not do what we do with out them!