Note: The Palisadian-Post Web site only displays a select number of articles from our weekly publication. We are the only newspaper offering complete advertising coverage of the important, high-income communities of the Pacific Palisades area, from Sunset Mesa and the Highlands to Santa Monica Canyon and Mandeville Canyon. For more in-depth coverage, including local government, business, schools, sports, arts, lifestyle, opinion and much more, see our print edition. Click here to subscribe! A triumph of nature and nurture, the queen honeybee is the head and heart of the hive. Plumped on royal jelly (secretion from the glands of worker bees) and pampered by worker bees, the queen is the colony’s big mama, whose sole mission is production’up to 2,000 eggs a day. Royal distinction for the queen bee can be traced to ancient times, some say 10,000 years ago, when human beings became beekeepers. In India, Persia, Rome Egypt and Babylonia, bees were considered sacred animals, symbols of life and fertility. In the 21st century, bees are no less important: they are responsible for the variety of our food, and ultimately our survival. ‘Four out of 10 bites of food we eat are dependent on the honeybee,’ says Michael Pollan, professor of science and environmental journalism at Berkeley. Pollan joined biodynamic beekeepers, scientists and philosophers to talk about the global bee crises in the documentary film ‘Queen of the Sun: What Are the Bees Telling Us,’ which screened last week at Aldersgate Retreat Center, as part of Palisadian Marie Steckmest’s Palisades Cares environmental initiative. Bees in Pacific Palisades are gloriously productive, thriving happily on the variety of both native and nonnative flowering plants that fill our gardens. There are some 500 native bees species in Southern California, all belonging to the family hymenoptera, which also includes wasps and ants. ’Bees are a special group of families that have branched hair on their body that help them retain pollen,’ says Brian Brown, curator of entomology at the Los Angeles Natural History Museum. ‘Although all bees feed on pollen and nectar, only certain kinds of bees make honey.’ Those bees we see foraging in our local landscape are both the honeybees and various native bee species, such as the familiar black and yellow bumblebees or the lumbering carpenter bees, often mistaken for bumblebees. These bees don’t produce honey or beeswax but do their share in the all-important work of pollinating our trees, plants, fruits and vegetables. Known as solitary bees, they make nests in hollow twigs, holes in wood or most commonly in tunnels in the ground. Yellowjackets, which we often think are bees as they are similar in size and appearance, and sting, are actually wasps. In contrast to honeybees, wasps and their close relatives, hornets, are carnivores and don’t carry pollen. They nest inside manmade structures or in soil cavities. Honeybees, on the other hand, are communal, distinguished by their complex social behavior, which involves a queen, worker bees and drones all working together in a colony to process pollen and nectar into wax and honey. Those jar-shaped swarming masses that you might find clinging to a lamppost, as was discovered in April 2011 on Swarthmore, or in any number of convenient nooks at home’vents or a hot water heater enclosure’are active communities. Obviously alarming to passersby, crowds of bees are all too often destroyed. When a swarm of honeybees showed up in Rob and Chelsea McFarland’s Culver City backyard, they called Backwards Beekeepers, a group of organic, treatment-free beekeepers in Los Angeles who remove and relocate honey bees. ‘It was pure magic for me seeing the swarm and gentle nature of bees,’ said Rob, a featured speaker at the Pali Cares program. The McFarlands are the founders of HoneyLove, a nonprofit organization with two goals: to inspire urban beekeepers and to help legalize beekeeping in Los Angeles. Contrary to popular lore, honeybees are too busy to be vicious. In the spring, when the nectar flows, bees are working overtime. ‘There is lots to forage on in our landscape,’ McFarland said. ‘Our cities are a banquet for bees. It is estimated that there are nine to 11 colonies for every mile in L.A.’ The workings of the hive add to the fascination beekeepers have with these amazingly productive factories. In building their home, bees collect pollen, sap (propolis) they use to seal their hive, making it resistant to bacteria and microbes, and nectar (sugar water), which will eventually, through fermentation, become honey. The comb in itself is a miracle. Each structure, a perfect hexagon made primarily of wax, is a nest for developing larvae as well as a storage pot for honey to be used to feed the larvae and the hive during winter. The workers (all female) create the queen by supplying a selected larva with a rich and continuous diet of protein-rich secretion called royal jelly. In addition to feeding the queen throughout her life, the workers gather pollen and keep the hive temperature even. When the time is right, the queen flies out of the colony into the air, whereupon she is greeted and inseminated by up to a dozen drones. She returns to the colony to begin full-time egg production for the rest of her life, which could be up to eight years. The diversity of the drone genes guarantees strength, energy and disease resistance for her brood. While all of this sounds like the Garden of Eden, there are real threats to the honeybee population in our agricultural areas. In the last three years, more than one in three honeybee colonies nationwide has died in a phenomenon know as collapse colony disorder. For farmers, this is a not only a great worry but potentially catastrophic. According to the Natural History’s Brown, you need a certain number of colonies to pollinate orchards. Michael Pollan points to the loss of diversity in agriculture as contributing to the bees’ demise. ’Monoculture wreaks havoc on honeybees’ diets, limiting options once the dominant crop is no longer flowering,’ he says. ‘Bees can’t survive on a continual cornfield; there is nothing to eat.’ The industry is now transporting hives over long distances in order to pollinate orchards. Working the bees nonstop for up to three months causes tremendous stress on the bees. Pesticides and fertilizers further contribute to their demise. This is where backyard beekeepers can help make up a little for the loss and increase awareness of the problem, the McFarlands say. ’We believe that the city is the last refuge of the honeybee. Our home gardens are free of pesticides, and in city like Los Angeles, there is year-round availability of pollen and nectar.’ While beekeeping is legal in Los Angeles County and in certain cities, such as Santa Monica and Redondo Beach, ‘the city of L. A. has no official policy; therefore it is illegal,’ Chelsea says. Los Angeles currently outlaws beekeeping in residential areas, and the city’s policy is to exterminate all feral honeybees. Four Community Councils within Los Angeles (Mar Vista, Del Rey, Greater Griffith Park and South Robertson) have already voted in favor of supporting an urban beekeeping program in residentially zoned districts. Legalizing beekeeping in Los Angeles would enable better bee management, control and public safety as compared to only having wild hives, which is the current situation, reasons Danny Jensen of Backwards Beekeeping. ‘More beekeepers actually mean fewer swarms, fewer feral bee colonies taking up residence where they aren’t wanted and fewer grumpy bees.’ For more information on urban beekeeping and upcoming events, visit honeylove.org.
This page is available to subscribers. Click here to sign in or get access.
