How sweet it is: joint local effort revolutionizing beekeeping

Posted on July 23, 2026 by Ryan Dahlman

By Zoe Mason
Southern Alberta Newspapers

Two scientific projects operating in Medicine Hat are teaming up to innovate new technologies to keep bees healthier and improve honey harvests.

Master beekeeper and Prairie Rose Public Schools instructor Sheldon Hill is researching whether insulated hive systems can improve the health and overall productivity of honey bee colonies.

Bees regulate the temperature of their hives, a process that expends energy.

Hill is comparing colonies housed in an insulated beehive with colonies housed in a typical wood structure to find out if helping with temperature regulation improves hive capacity.

“I want more productive hives, I want them to be cheaper to run, I want them to make more honey and I want them to live longer,” said Hill.

Preliminary results suggest he’s on to something. The insulated colony produced 130 pounds of honey, compared to 82 pounds in the non-insulated control hive, an increase in production of 77 per cent.

But he is in the final stages of applying for a grant that would scale up his research.

In order to do that, he needs data.

“Then I can go back and say, over a year, two years, whatever it is, you’re going to be able to pay back this investment as a producer.”

That’s where BeeSafe Biotech comes in.

BeeSafe is a Lethbridge-based startup aiming to revolutionize diagnostic testing for beekeepers.

It uses rapid-test technology to identify the presence of viruses and disease-carrying varroa mites within a given colony.

The two-year old company is still in the testing phase, using traditional laboratory testing to confirm the accuracy of the new rapid test. So far, they’re experiencing high rates of success.

Hill is just one of four beekeepers participating in the BeeSafe pilot. Other hives are located across the prairies near Lethbridge, Edmonton and Saskatoon.

For producers like Hill, faster access to that kind of information can help inform proactive decisions that could protect the rest of the apiary against a devastating infection.

Hill calls the tech a potential game changer.

“The way I’d have to do it is to sample and send it off to a lab. That could take two or three weeks to get the result back. With this technology, you can do this within the field, and know immediately.”

To support Hill’s project, BeeSafe’s diagnostic tech is being used to demonstrate whether the insulated hives produce better health outcomes for the bees inside.

Both projects are reliant on grant funding to keep operations going. In Medicine Hat, they’re hoping their mutual support will help both projects go further.

It’s a spirit of collaboration Hill says is often missing from scientific research, which is prone to fall into patterns of insularity.

“I think that’s a really poor way of innovating,” said Hill.

“That’s one thing about the bee research community, I feel like everyone is pretty interconnected, and I think it’s getting better at collaboration,” added BeeSafe CEO and co-founder Jenna Letain.

Collaboration is at the forefront of Hill and his wife and assistant Stella Sehn’s beekeeping team as they enter a new era of what has been a rollercoaster career.

Their business, Sweet Pure Honey, was devastated by the pandemic, ultimately leading to the difficult decision to sell their farm. When they were approached by Prairie Rose agricultural director Nichole Neubauer to run a beekeeping program as the division prepared to launch its flagship agriculture school, it seemed like a second chance.

Once complete, the agricultural school will be home to the teaching apiary, as well as a laboratory that will allow students to engage in the kinds of scientific testing BeeSafe is innovating.

Construction on the Yuill School of Agriculture commenced June 23.

“We don’t know that’s what this research project is going to prove,” said Sehn. “But if we can help each other and collaborate and work together to get the word out and maybe inspire the next generation of scientists, that’s great. And who knows – why can’t it be us, for the next invention?”