Bees!

Whenever I see honeybee farms, I always find myself wondering about them. How much honey do they produce? How many bees do they keep? Is it even profitable to keep bees? Believe or not, Statistics Canada has some data on honeybees that goes all the way back to 1924!
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Author

Andrew Lis

Published

September 22, 2021

Without a doubt, this is one for the ‘random’ section of this blog.

I came across some data on honeybees a few years back – I honestly can’t recall how – but I do recall being struck by how much variation there was in the data.

You might not think that keeping honeybees in Canada would be a volatile business, but there have been some pretty big swings in the beekeeping business in Canadian history!

To start, have a look at the total value and volumes of natural honey produced in Canada, by province:

These are annual data which (incredibly) go all the way back to 1924. In the most recent data (2020), honey production in Canada reached a near-record high of around 90m pounds, with a total value of roughly $200m.

Who knew the regurgitations from these amazing little creatures could be so valuable!

Honeybitrage

Looking at value and volume of production is interesting, since for most provinces these variables are highly positively correlated – but there are some notable exceptions.

Take Ontario for instance:

The value of the honey produced in Ontario has remained on an upward trajectory over time, while the amount produced declined substantially around the 1950s and has stayed relatively steady (but noisy) over the past 70 years or so.

Observing this kind of divergence calls for a calculation:

What is the value of honey per pound produced across provinces in Canada?

Calculating this out might help to put these values into a context most people can more easily comprehend, since the resulting value might be similar to the price one might pay at the grocery store.

Here’s a plot of the value of honey per pound:

The trader/economist in me is wondering how it’s possible to have such substantial differences in the value of honey per pound across the country.

Sure, there are differences in costs of production, shipping costs, storage costs, etc. But, is there not a possible opportunity for honey-arbitrage here?

If the value per pound of honey in Ontario is trading at about $4, but literally next door in Manitoba it’s trading at around $2, wouldn’t it maybe make sense to load up a truck full of honey from Manitoba to go sell it in Ontario?

I’m not going to quit my day job to become a honey-slinging arbitrageur, but the spreads in these numbers are certainly intriguing…

The Beekeeper Bubble

Here’s something pretty wild.

Check out the bubble of beekeepers that popped back in the late 1940s:

Depending on your knowledge of world history, you might be able to guess (at least partially) why there was such an enormous run-up and subsequent bust in the number of beekeepers across Canada back in the day.

If you guessed that it had something to do with the war effort supporting Canadian troops in WWII, I award you 4.3 million magic points. Congratulations – spend them wisely.

This bubble puzzled me a bit at first, and while I did suspect it had something to do with WWII, what I did not expect to learn was that there were two reasons for the explosion in beekeepers:

  1. Beeswax was a key component in making ammunition belts for the war effort; and
  2. Sugar was rationed in Canada in 1942 and so honey (naturally) served as a substitute.

I know, right!?

Who would have thought such a tiny and simple data set could be so interesting.

Data and Code

Believe it or not, there’s still some other aspects of these data I didn’t explore in this post. If you’re interested in exploring these data further or customizing the charts to your own liking, the code that generated these plots is available on Github here.

Footnotes

  1. I did not know this until writing this post, but apparently honey is regurgitated from a collector bee into other honey bees mouths in the hive, who then store it in the honeycomb. Read all about these fascinating creatures and the production of honey here.↩︎

  2. The price at the grocer would likely be quite a bit higher, as the values represent bulk honey straight from the producers which has not yet been bottled or marked up by a grocer and all the other intermediaries.↩︎

  3. You can read even more interesting facts about honey production in Canada on this archived Statistics Canada blog post.↩︎