President, Honeybee Centre
Contract Instructor, KPU
John grew up in a honeybee family. Shortly after moving to B.C. from Alberta in 1977, John started renting bees to berry growers in the Fraser Valley with only 12 colonies transported on a home-made utility trailer. In year 2000, John created the Honeybee Centre at the corner of 176th Street and Fraser Highway in Surrey. In 2002, he opened his country store and visitor centre, and in 2017 he placed over 8,000 beehives into 11 different crops in the Lower Mainland, which produce over $50 million dollars in fruit.
John is one of a small handful of people in North America who specialize in ‘wrangling’ honeybees, bumblebees, and wasps for the film industry. He has put honeybees on Nicolas Cage and bald-faced hornets on Bradley Cooper. Since 2001, John has been involved in more than four dozen film productions.
In 2009, John co-founded Bee World Project, a not-for profit organization that teaches beekeeping to farmers in developing countries. He has worked on projects in British Columbia, Cambodia, Peru, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Uganda, and Ethiopia.
John proudly served as a police officer for 16 years with the Burnaby R.C.M.P. and New Westminster City Police. He worked in patrol, administration, fraud, and for four years as a homicide detective. John has a Bachelor of Science degree and an MBA.
He has been married to Verna since they were both 19 years old, has two wonderful children, and three grandchildren so far; he ordered six! John plays the cello, but not very well.