Long Beach Beekeepers

@lbbeekeepers.bsky.social

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Education and outreach on behalf of Southern California honey bees and the people who love them. An educational 501(c)(3) corporation.

Long Beach Beekeeper Bill Lewis prepares to pour five gallons of fine honey into the tank. Photo by Jacob Dickinson.
A student dips candle wicks into hot, liquid beeswax repeatedly to build up small birthday candles. Two cans of liquid beeswax sit in a couple of inches of water. A bright red cast iron pot has been pressed into service as a double boiler. The student is dipping both ends of an inverted U of candle wick, to make two candles at once. Photo by Jacob Dickinson.
Instructor Jennifer Duke laughs with two Gifts from the Hive students as she fills a jar with lotion. Jennifer, in her trademark blue shirt, stands and the head of the table and the students sit on the right. The table is littered with various supplies and accessories: A couple of mixing bowls full of lotion, completed birthday candles, and tiny bottles of essential oils. Photo by Jacob Dickinson.
UC Riverside Center for Integrative Bee Research (CIBER) graduate student Emilia Burnham, Nosema ceranae researcher, attends the 2024 CIBER Bee Health conference in pink high heel shoes, pink dress, pink jacket, pink N95 mask, and 2024 California Honey Queen regalia (sash and crown). Don't dream it, be it. Photo by Jacob Dickinson.
Jeff Salcido (right, wearing cap) and Marta Vallez (right, on-brand and wearing white Long Beach Beekeepers t-shirt) talk bees with visitors (left) in the Bixby Knolls Expo Arts Center during the 8/2/2024 First Fridays event. Photo by Jacob Dickinson.
A European honey bee (Apis mellifera) forages among yellow flowers in a low shrub, between 9,000 and 10,000 feet above sea level. The photograph was taken next to White Mountain Road, on the way to Schulman Grove and the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest Visitor Center, 8/30/2024. Photo by Jacob Dickinson.
A Bluesky screen celebrating 10 million users indicates that the Long Beach Beekeepers account (#lbbeekeepers.bsky.social) was user number 1,472,876!
Un instructor de Apicultura 101 sostiene un marco de colmena cubierto en su mayor parte por abejas. Traducción de Israel Romero. Foto de Jacob Dickinson. Was that difficult to read? Tell your Spanish-speaking friends! They'll see something like this: Take a free beekeeping class in your native language! Sunday, September 29, 2024, 8:00-9:30 a.m. at the Willow Springs Bee Sanctuary. Details and registration at https://longbeachbeekeepers.org/event-5768292
Alchemical apparatus: Black and white photo of a system of stainless steel tanks, electronic controls, metal steps giving access to the controls and the tops of the tanks, and other brewery equipment at Syncopated Brewing Company. This equipment was used to brew the Honey Bee and a Mango Tree honey beer. Photo by Jacob Dickinson.
Honeycomb in a wooden frame, as pulled from the hive. The translucent white wax shows that this comb is probably brand new, not previously used for honey storage. (As much as we like honey bees, we have to admit they don't wipe their feet when they enter the hive. The passage of many bees and their little bee feet darkens wax over time.) Photo by Jacob Dickinson.
Retired professional beekeeper and avuncular instructor Bill Lewis explains it all, in artistic black and white. Bill wears a stylish full body ventilated bee suit and prepares to open a hive for inspection. (Or has he just closed it back up?) In the background, three students watch closely. In the foreground, a bottle of alcohol for Varroa mite testing and a smoker sit on top of another hive. Photo by Jacob Dickinson.
Instructor Liz Kennedy shows a frame full of healthy honey bees to the Long Beach Beekeepers Beekeeping 101 class at the Zaferia Junction Community Garden. The hives are located inside a screened enclosure, forcing the bees to leave and return above people's heads. Students in white protective clothing fill the enclosure. Photo by Jacob Dickinson.
Jessica Webb discussing her work in the UC Riverside CIBER lab in fashionable CIBER t-shirt, holding a honey bee between left thumb and forefinger, and forceps in her right hand. The bee, if still alive, would rather be somewhere else. The lab tour was part of the 2022 Bee Health conference. Photo by Jacob Dickinson.
David Bowie and fuzzy honey bee friend, Belinda Bee, performing live at the Tower in 1974: Together, for a brief and shining moment, the hardest working pair in show business. Sadly, they only toured for three weeks before Belinda's wings wore out and she died. The few who experienced this part of the tour were fortunate indeed. "The Bs Live at the Tower 1974" created by Jacob Dickinson and licensed by the Long Beach Beekeepers under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/deed.en ). This is a composite of two other images: "David Bowie Live 1974 (cropped).jpg" from Wikimedia Commons, via picryl; Creative Commons Public Domain Mark 1.0 Universal license ( https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/ ). "IMG 6931 honey bee3" by Deviant Art user GoatDriver; Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 license ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ ).
Cup o' Bees, or Some Must Die so Others May Live: Bill Lewis (right) has scooped out an appropriate quantity of bees for a statistically valid Varroa mite sample using the bright yellow mite tester cup in his right hand. He's about to pour the bees into the translucent part of the mite tester, in his left hand. As he swirls the mite tester around, the bees will unfortunately drown in an alcohol solution. However, any mites will also die, let go of the bees, and sink to the bottom of the mite tester. (The quantity of bees used is also a fraction of the number of eggs a healthy queen lays every day.) A student watches closely. Bill and the student both wear full bee suits.
Jennifer Duke explains the skep, an inverted woven basket, sometimes placed on a base, and traditionally used as a beehive. Photo by Jacob Dickinson.
Beekeeping 101 Instructor Lucy Barraza (second from right, wearing green rubber gloves) discusses inspection of some of Bill Lewis's Italian bee colonies at the Long Beach Beekeepers Willow Springs Park Bee Sanctuary. Both wear full-length bee suits with hoods and veils. Photo by Jacob Dickinson.
A white cardboard box with screened sides, for ventilation, holds the entire order of docile Italian honey bee queens. Bill Lewis holds up a single queen cage, with several attendants to take care of the queen. The new queen is insde the cage. Like the box, the cage has screened sides for ventilation. However, the screens also protect the queen from the initially hostile bees in its new hive. The queen cage also has a sugar candy plug filling the hole drilled in the bottom. This is intended to keep the queen inside the cage, and the new hive's worker bees outside, until a few days have passed. During this time, we hope the hive will have come under the sway of the new queen's pheromones, so that she will be welcomed when the plug is finally eaten away and she emerges. Photo by Jacob Dickinson.
Marie-José of Belgium (Marie-José Charlotte Sophie Amélie Henriette Gabrielle), whose 34-day "May Queen" reign made her the last queen of Italy, in 1946 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie-Jos%C3%A9_of_Belgium ). Photo is for illustrative purposes only and may not resemble any Italian queens you have, or even Italian queens you've seen. Ever. Public domain photo from Wikimedia Commons.
University of California Riverside Center for Integrated Bee Research (CIBER) Ph.D. candidate Genesis Chong, wearing immaculate beekeeping suit with red baseball cap, holds a crowded deep frame of very industrious honey bees. The bees have filled the frame with honey comb, partially capped; and they have constructed a large piece of comb handing from the bottom of the frame. Photo provided by Genesis Chong.
In the foreground, Long Beach Beekeepers volunteer Melissa Danio begins showing our observation hive to a mother and daughter visiting the June 7, 2024 Bixby Knolls First Fridays. The observation hive is our education and outreach assets, here on the information table we set up in the Expo Arts Center during most First Fridays events. An important part of this First Fridays agenda was a Bob Ross lookalike contest; and indeed, a tall Bob Ross lookalike stands behind the other three people, equipped with palette and blue chambray work shirt. Photo by Jacob Dickinson. More photos at https://flic.kr/s/aHBqjBxzJN .
Two Long Beach Poly High School students suit up in beekeeping jackets and gloves for the first time, figuring out how to get their fingers all the way to the ends of their long, long gloves, in preparation for a tailored version of the Long Beach Beekeepers Beekeeping 101 class. Honey Bee Ambassador Mike Pack, President Jaime Guoz and Sanctuary Manager Gabe Salinas presented the class at the Long Beach Beekeepers Bee Sanctuary in Willow Springs Park. Photo by Jacob Dickinson; more at https://flic.kr/s/aHBqjBvFyc .
Long Beach Beekeepers Past President Jennifer Duke, wearing a sage t-shirt with a bee design, plays peek-a-boo with a medium frame almost completely filled with honeycomb. Jennifer was one of the instructors at the May 11 Honey Harvesting Workshop. Photo by Jacob Dickinson.
The image, intended to look lik a woodcut, shows a skep, an old kind of European beehive. Wikipedia ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beehive#Skeps ) explains: Skeps, baskets placed open-end-down, have been used to house bees for some 2000 years. Believed to have been first used in Ireland, they were initially made from wicker plastered with mud and dung but after the Middle Ages, almost all were made of straw. In northern and western Europe, skeps were made of coils of grass or straw. Image by rawpixel.com, licensed under CC0 ( https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ ).
Bill Lewis (nearest to the camera, wearing a ventilated bee suit, standing in the middle of a cloud of bees) teaches the 5/11/2024 Long Beach Beekeepers Re-Queening Colonies (Group B) inside the screened enclosure at the Willow Springs Park Honey Bee Sanctuary. Bill uses a hive tool to remove and inspect individual frames, looking for honey bee queens and signs of queen activity. Several students watch closely. The student farthest from the camera holds a deep frame which has been passed around so that everyone can look. More photos at https://flic.kr/s/aHBqjBqB5Q . Photo by Jacob Dickinson.
Jennifer Duke, wearing a white honey bee print blouse, discusses what beekeepers can do to discourage their bees from swarming and answers related questions. A screen on the wall behind her displays her presentation. More photos at https://flic.kr/s/aHBqjBpaM6 . Photo by Jacob Dickinson.
Students enrolled in the 5/4/2024 Long Beach Beekeepers Re-Queening and Splitting Colonies class at the Willow Springs Park Honey Bee Sanctuary surround an open hive from which Bill Lewis (center) has extracted the queen. The hive in front of Bill is missing several frames, removed and inspected in the search for the queen. Bill holds the queen in his hand, where he will crush her before introducing a new queen to the hive. (Years ago a vegan friend explained that she could not eat honey, and this is why.) No one involved knew it at the time, but later I realized this was a historical reenactment, with the queen as Marie Antoinette, Bill as the Revolutionary Tribunal, and the students as the Paris mob. More photos at https://flic.kr/s/aHBqjBpeEp . Photo by Jacob Dickinson.
Long Beach Beekeepers Beekeeping 101 instructors Lucy Barraza (in green gloves, at right) and Tom Sipe (left) work with students in the enclosure of the Honey Bee Sanctuary in Willow Springs Park. Tom holds a deep frame, which has just been removed from an open hive so that the surrounding students can get a close look. Lucy has carefully positioned a towel over much of the hive, to minimize the disruption experienced by the bees. In the center of the group, a girl flanked by her parents leans over the hive for a good look. More photos at https://flic.kr/s/aHBqjBpg6b . Photo by Jacob Dickinson.
Long Beach Beekeepers member Ray Teurman shows off an observation hive and answers questions at the 4/3/2024 Bixby Knolls First Fridays, speaking to a man whose children are going eyeball-to-eyeball with the observation hive. Meanwhile, in the background, a child seizes the opportunity to mug with our photo board. Not pictured: Jaime Guoz. More photos at https://flic.kr/s/aHBqjBpeRg . Photo by Jacob Dickinson.
Long Beach Beekeepers Past President Jennifer Duke, good at explaining bees and beekeeping to inquiring minds of all ages, stands in the Bixby Elementary School playground, wearing a bee suit and explaining an observation hive to two students. One of the students holds Jennifer's smoker. Photo by long-time Long Beach Beekeepers member and now Bixby Elementary parent Luis Sanchez. Thanks, Luis!
A large, healthy swarm of survivor bees hangs from the bottom of one of Ray Teurman's swarm traps, showing no interest in actually entering. Photo by Jacob Dickinson.
Two Long Beach Beekeepers volunteers and several thousand conscripts (in observation hive) respond to a visitor's questions during the April 5, 2024 Bixby Knolls First Fridays. Ray Teurman (center) models a ventilated full body bee suit. Photo by Jacob Dickinson.
Sanctuary Manager Gabe Salinas leads a 4/6 Long Beach Beekeepers Bee Prepared class at the Willow Springs Park Honey Bee Sanctuary. He wears a heavy canvas bee jacket and holds a bee brush in his left hand. He holds a toolbox in his right hand. He holds the insulated, hinged lid of a top bar hive open with his left hand and leans over the frames, quickly inspecting the hive. Photo by Jacob Dickinson.
This student in Bill Lewis's 4/6/2024 Mite Management in Italian Colonies class feels it's a good time to check and adjust gloves. The student stands near two hives full of Italian honey bees in the Long Beach Beekeepers Honey Bee Sanctuary, in Willow Springs Park, and wears a full bee suit. Photo by Jacob Dickinson.
Lucy Barraza, in bee suit, explains it all to you at the 4/6/2024 Long Beach Beekeepers Beekeeping 101 class. An observation hive on a picnic table contains a single frame of honey bees, visible behind a pane of glass. Three students seated at the table listen carefully. Class was held in the Long Beach Organic South 40 garden. Photo by Jacob Dickinson.
An observation hive full of milling bees mesmerizes a boy at the Long Beach Beekeepers information table, during the Bixby Knolls First Fridays "County Fair" event. This happens consistently. After all, how often does someone who's not a beekeeper go eyeball-to-eyeball with a few hundred of them? Photo by Jacob Dickinson.
The existing fence is rusty chainlink fence, and that's ugly when it's brand new! Our rain has brought out the best in the existing plants, which are blooming enthusiastically on both sides of the fence. However, more and thicker plantings will thrive in drier years; force foraging bees to fly higher, above nearby walkers; and discourage late-night exploration which damages the fence, as shown here. Photo by Jacob Dickinson.
Docile Italian bees mill around on top of mixed wooden and plastic frames after the top of their hive was removed for inspection during the 3/8/2024 Long Beach Beekeepers Mite Management class. They have more of a golden color than our survivor bees, and thus more closely resemble the cartoon cliche yellow and black bee we're all familiar with.
Woman juggles flaming batons or torches at the 3/1/2024 Bixby Knolls First Fridays event, in front of the Expo Arts Center on Atlantic Avenue in Long Beach. Photo by Jacob Dickinson.
An apparently healthy honey bee--the goal of an IPM strategy--forages among blueberry blossoms. Photo by Mike Pack.
Jennifer Duke displays a glass vial containing a honey bee worker's vanishingly small average lifetime honey production, as Di LaPlume looks on. Protective clothing and an observation hive occupy the countertop behind Jennifer. Samples of beeswax, a hive tool, and a smoker sit on the table at front left. Photo by Jacob Dickinson.
Two students in the Long Beach Beekeepers April 2024 Bee Prepared course. Image created by Jacob Dickinson using iPhone Diffusitron app with this prompt: Positive Prompt: (Beekeeper in steampunk deep sea diver’s suit tending beehives in an apiary.:1.2) Golden honey dripping from the combs, illuminated by glowing bioluminescent jellyfish. Detailed, intricate line work, with steampunk gears and gadgets, fantasy art, 4K, octane render, by Brian Froud and Jim Henson, whimsical, magical, trending on Artstation
Honey bees on mostly uncapped honeycomb. Photo provided by Kitchen Lingo Books.
Bill's Bees owner Jeremy Jensen describes his work with beekeeper and researcher Randy Oliver's Varroa destructor mite management app at the March 3 Long Beach Beekeepers meeting. Photo by Jacob Dickinson.
The sweatshop gears up to wire frames. Note fashionable Long Beach Beekeepers attire.
Bee puzzles draw two visitors to a quiet space in the middle of the Bixby Knolls First Fridays crowd.
Image created by Jacob Dickinson using iPhone Diffusitron app with this prompt: (Ancient Egyptian women beekeepers tend bees living in stacked clay pipes. They work under the shade of trees growing at the edge of a field. The Nile River meanders past in the middle distance. The pyramids rise on the other side of the Nile, clad in polished granite and topped with gold.:1.2) The women wear white linen dresses and head coverings, adorned with intricate gold and turquoise jewelry. Their long black hair is braided and decorated with colorful beads. The bees buzz around them, drawn to the flowers they have planted among the crops. The women expertly tend to the hives, collecting honey and beeswax to trade in the bustling marketplaces of ancient Egypt. Rays of golden sunlight filter through the trees, casting a warm glow over the scene. In the distance, a flock of birds takes flight, their wings creating a symphony of movement against the blue sky. This vibrant and detailed illustration ca...
Black silhouette of a Varroa destructor mite, dedicated to the public domain by Lubna Maherally.
Mesolithic rock painting of a honey hunter harvesting honey and wax from a bees nest in a tree, dating to around 8000-6000 BC. At Cuevas de la Araña in Bicorp, Spain. Copyright (C) 2024 Long Beach Beekeepers This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/>. Original image at https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Cueva_arana.svg Contact us: https://longbeachbeekeepers.org/Contact License: GNU General Public License 3.0
One participant displays the finished product: A medium beehive frame with wax foundation supported by embedded wires. Photo by Di LaPlume.
Close-up of dark purple Concord grapes, with some visible stems. Some appear dusty and lighter-colored; others are shiny where they’ve been handled. "Concord Grapes" by Emily Barney (ebarney): CC BY-NC 2.0 DEED, via Flickr.com.
Speaker George Davidson makes points about parasitic Tropilaelaps mites.
Long Beach Beekeepers volunteer in bee suit at the club’s Long Beach Bixby Knolls First Fridays information table, talking to visitors and showing off an observation hive.
January speaker Jeremy Jensen, of Bill's Bees, stands in a grassy field with a rocky hill in the background, wearing a bee suit and holding a Varroa destructor parasitic mite test kit up to the light to get a quick impression of test results. Photo by Di LaPlume.
An observation hive full of honey bees fascinates a boy at the December First Fridays by the Long Beach Beekeepers club, at the EXPO Arts Center in Bixby Knolls, Long Beach, California. His older brother and mother enjoy watching as a club member answers questions. The observation hive sits on the club's information table, which also holds a variety of books and teaching aids, and honey sticks.
Luci prepares to remove a frame for a closer look.
A child completely engrossed by the observation hive at the Long Beach Beekeepers information table, Long Beach Bixby Knolls First Friday. Photo by Jaime Guoz.
Dick Barnes (in Hawaiian shirt) at the Long Beach Beekeepers information table, showing off an observation hive and talking bees during a 2015 Bixby Knolls First Friday.
Jennifer Duke dips birthday candle wicks in liquid beeswax.