This year has been a little tough on honey production in southern Manitoba. Marc Nichol, owner of Prairie Honeyworks in MacGregor, says smoke played a factor.

"For us, personally, it kind of wasn't the best. We look back and try to figure out where things could've been improved, and I think at our end we did pretty much everything we could," he said. "It was kind of left up to Mother Nature. It left us with an interesting summer when it came down to a lot of smoke in the air at the start of the year, which hampered the bees' ability to forage. That equated into a season that was a challenge for us, and I think a lot of other producers found that as well."

Nichol also says the hot and humid weather over the summer wasn't ideal for bees to forage in, either.

He adds, "For us, we just wrapped things up here now. Usually the first part of September is when things start to finish up for the year. And then move into our fall seeding and treatment program for the bees."

Nichol says the state of his hives is in surprisingly good shape.

"Ironically, you would think in a poor season like this it wouldn't be that good. But from what we see is that the bees have replenished themselves when it comes to not working themselves hard like they do in some years when the weather's better. So, the population looks very good in the hives right now, and they seem to be healthy and taking feed, and everything that they need to."