Beekeepers in Saskatchewan and other Prairie provinces say their industry is suffering because of delays in processing visas for seasonal workers from the Philippines.

Beekeepers have already recruited the workers, but the Canadian embassy in the Philippines has been slow to process the necessary paperwork, said John Gruszka, an apiculture specialist in Saskatchewan's Ministry of Agriculture.

The summer season is the busiest for beekeepers, he said.

"Ours is one of many labour-intensive seasonal jobs, like the greenhouse growers [and] nursery growers," Gruszka said. "There's a lot of work early in the spring right to the end of fall. And because it is such a short season, and everything blooms and the honey is produced all at once, it is incredibly intense, and we need the people."

Gruszka said beekeepers have become more dependent on foreign workers in the past 10 years because Canadians prefer permanent jobs to seasonal work.

Federal officials said they did not know what was causing the delays in processing the work documents.