The Beekeeper Exchange Experience
The Beekeeper Exchange is a hosted cruise experience built for beekeepers who want to learn, swap ideas, and broaden perspective by seeing how beekeeping and agriculture look in different regions along the route.
This isn’t a lecture-style conference. It’s a mix of guided group conversations, optional mini-sessions onboard, and destination experiences that add real-world context for comparison and discussion. Just as important, it’s a chance to build relationships with other beekeepers through shared time onboard and memorable experiences in port.
Hosted by Michael Clark
Michael Clark is a third-generation commercial beekeeper from a 100-year family farm also a board member with the Manitoba Beekeepers’ Association. Michael hosts the week to keep the discussions focused, useful, and well organized. He also designed the itinerary to balance structured discussion with port-day perspective, this way participants head home motivated for the season ahead. Michael is also a travel advisor and cruise enthusiast, helping ensure the week is well organized on both the beekeeping and travel side.
How the Exchange Works
Sea days are structured as professional development time. We run scheduled sessions (round-tables and short presentations) focused on practical beekeeper topics: management decisions, seasonal planning, bee health, equipment and efficiency, and industry trends. Each session has a clear theme, learning objective, and time for Q&A and peer discussion.
Port days are about broadening perspective. Excursions are selected to expose participants to different environments, local agriculture, and regional beekeeping traditions. Because climate and conditions vary, the purpose isn’t to copy a system, it’s to understand how and why practices differ, and to sharpen your own decision-making through comparison and discussion.