Bees keep Canadian ski jumper Abigail Strate busy in summer

Tending bees helps Canadian ski jumper Abigail Strate find tranquility amid an adrenalin rush.

That's a handy skill to have when she's plunging down an inrun to defy gravity for as long as she can.

"It's actually trained me to be quite calm in kind of chaotic situations, and those situations happen quite often in sports," Strate said.

She's been stung more times than she can count, but that doesn't dampen her enthusiasm for the hard-working insects.

"It is calming if you're calm and you're working nicely around them, but it can also get a bit hectic if the bees aren't too happy you're there," Strate said.

"Maybe because I'm a ski jumper and in the winter, I get that adrenalin rush, maybe I get that adrenalin rush being around the bees and the buzz around my head."

The 23-year-old from Calgary spends months away from home training in Slovenia and travelling around the globe to compete.

One of the first things she likes to do when she returns to Calgary in the spring is check the hives she and her father Rod established northwest of the city, to see what their bees have been up to and how they survived the winter.

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The daughter and father took a course five years ago to become certified beekeepers.

"It always kind of fascinated me, beekeeping and honey and hives and the whole production," Strate said. "There's a lot of really interesting facts about them that most people wouldn't know. I could go on for days telling you about them."

Strate helped Canada win its first Olympic medal in ski jumping in Beijing in 2022 when she and Alexandria Loutitt, MacKenzie Boyd-Clowes and Matthew Soukup earned bronze in the new mixed-team event.

Strate claimed