Season 9 Episode 5: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – The 50% Honey Tariff: When a Market Disappears
The bees made the honey. Now who will buy it?
A new 50% U.S. tariff on Canadian honey arrived just as Prairie beekeepers began harvesting the 2026 crop.
The numbers reveal an uncomfortable imbalance: Canadian honey is only about 2% of U.S. honey imports, but the amount we send south is equivalent to roughly 14% of Canada's entire annual honey production. Canadian honey is not that important to American consumers, but American consumers are important to Canadian beekeepers.
For some family beekeeping operations, the exposure is much greater. One Manitoba producer has historically sold about 90% of its honey into the United States. I also loook at Saskatchewan and Alberta beekeepers.
In this episode of About Bees, Culture, and Curiosity, I look at the people behind the statistics, why the U.S.A. imports so much honey, and whether Canada could absorb more of its own crop by reducing the nearly 25 million pounds of honey Canadians import each year.
The bees did their job. The difficult part now is finding a market.
This podcast was
Recorded August 2026 in Calgary.
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About Ron Miksha: https://about-bees.org/about-ron/
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