It’s April. Spring has sprung. The sun is shining. Why not take a moment to stop and smell the roses?

And if you listen to the conversation of the bees, you might hear them say things in a Midwestern drawl like “keeper movin” or “you betcha.”

That is because many of the bees flying around your neighborhood — especially if you live close to an avocado orchard — belong to commercial beekeepers from the Midwest. 

Here at La Patera Ranch in Goleta, two of the three commercial beekeepers we work with are from the Midwest (Minnesota and South Dakota).

Why do Midwestern beekeepers make the long journey to Santa Barbara County’s South Coast? Local avocado growers have been partnering with and hosting Midwestern beekeepers for decades, forming a very valuable and mutually beneficial relationship.

Recently, I sat down for a Q&A with Stacy and Bruce Wilmer, who own and operate Wilmer Honey Farm from their home state of Minnesota.

The Wilmers explained how they — and other beekeepers like them — have partnered with Santa Barbara County avocado growers as part of their business model.

Zach Rissel: How long have you been beekeeping? When and where did you start?

Stacy and Bruce Wilmer: Wilmer Honey has been pollinating crops and producing honey for 40 years.

A Nebraska beekeeper named Bob Cary found that northern Minnesota had a good supply of sweet clover, alfalfa and sunflowers for honey production.

So, what started as a summer job for me turned into the type of agriculture that I would continue to pursue.

ZR: Has beekeeping been in your family (families) or was this a new venture for you?

The Wilmers: No, we are first-generation beekeepers but Wilmer Honey has always been a family-run operation.

Our three children — Evan, Mitch and Abby — always had summer jobs working in the honey house or bee yard. There is nothing better than your kids growing up and learning to work beside you on the farm.

It has also been a great opportunity for many nieces and nephews to come and experience their first job.

Bruce’s father, Harvey, and his brother, Bryan, have also been a great help over the years.

We have a core group of Minnesota men who work with us and, since 2015, we have used the H2A program, which is an agricultural visa that allows us to bring beekeepers from other countries.

We have beekeepers from the Philippines, El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicacagua. These men have also become an important part of our beekeeping operation.

Even though we are still working daily for Wilmer Honey, our son, Mitch, has taken over for the next generation.

ZR: Tell us about your season and your operation in Minnesota. When you have your bees back home, are you solely focused on honey production or do you also lease your hives for pollination in Minnesota as well in the warm months?

The Wilmers: Wilmer Honey Farm has produced honey and pollinated crops in northwestern Minnesota since 1986.

We work with farmers from Minnesota and neighboring states to pollinate their crops, such as canola, sunflowers and sweet clover. We harvest the honey from those hives in the late summer.

When their job is done in Minnesota, the honeybees are transported to Southern California to begin their winter season. The avocado, citrus and almond trees are then pollinated by the bees with no surplus honey being produced.

The crew of Wilmer Honey spends this time caring for and preparing the honeybee colonies for their work to begin again in Minnesota.

ZR: When did you start coming to California for the pollination season? Do you exclusively pollinate almonds in the Central Valley or are there other tree crops you work with? Tell us how the stops in Santa Barbara County help your operation?

The Wilmers: Bruce has been traveling with honeybees to California since 1980 to pollinate avocados, citrus and cherimoyas along the coast. The bees will also be trucked to Bakersfield for almond and cherry pollination.

Over all these years, Bruce is still working with the same ranch owners and ranch managers in Goleta and Gaviota, and they have become longtime friends.

The South Coast can be very lush with hillside wildflower and eucalyptus bloom along with blooming trees from the orchards.

The bees do well when the natural pollen is brought into the hive after the area has received rainfall and the bloom begins.

ZR: What happens when you move your bees out to California? What is the timing between the various moves between Goleta and the Central Valley? How many times do you need to split a hive in an average year? When do you send the hives back to Minnesota?

The Wilmers: After our honey harvest has ended in Minnesota in late summer, the crew will begin to feed and medicate the bees preparing them for their trip to California.

We hire 48-foot flatbed semis to haul the bees across country and their three-day journey begins the first week of October.

The semis will arrive in Goleta at night while the bees are in their boxes. Then the crew will transfer the colonies to our smaller trucks and spread them in different orchards.

The bees will be placed in the orchards along the coast until Feb. 1. They are then moved to the almond orchards near Bakersfield for pollination until approximately March 10, when the almond bloom has finished.

The bees are brought back to the orchards along the coast in Goleta and Gaviota for pollination.

It is at this time the crew will start to split our hives to increase our colony count and re-queen the hives as needed. This is done in the spring using the pollen and nectar from the blooming trees as the bees use it for feed and to produce more brood or new bees.

If a hive is healthy, we are able to turn one hive into two or three hives. Our mated queens are shipped to us from Hawai‘i and Northern California.

It is after the peak avocado bloom at the end of May when the bees begin their journey back to Minnesota, and is usually a two- to three-week process to gather and ship them.

ZR: It must be challenging to move your bees. How do you limit the stress on them? 

The Wilmers: The bees are gathered at night or early morning when they are tucked away in their boxes.

The semis that haul the bees will be loaded at night to keep the bees calm and minimize bee flight. A net is placed over the load to allow the air to circulate but contain the bees as they travel across the country.

We use truck drivers who specialize in hauling honeybees and know that the load must keep moving during the day to keep the bees in their boxes. All fuel stops happen at night and if the load has to stop, water will be sprayed on the load to keep the bees cool.

ZR: You have quite a big operation. How many truck loads does it take to move all of your hives between California and Minnesota?

ZR: There seems to be quite a few beekeepers from Minnesota and the Dakotas who come out to California for the pollination season in the Central Valley and to fatten up the bees in the avocado groves along the coast. Is California the only winter destination for beekeepers in your part of the country or are there other popular destinations, like the Southern states?

The Wilmers: Depending on the year, it can take up to 30-40 semis to truck our bees back to Minnesota.

The Wilmers: The most popular winter destinations for honeybees are Texas, Florida and California.

ZR: Your hives always look so vigorous and healthy. What are your keys to maintaining healthy bees and a healthy hive? How do you measure hive health?

The Wilmers: Nutrition, Varroa mite control and staying away from insecticides seem to be the most important steps in maintaining healthy hives.

In the winter months, the bees are fed corn syrup when there is not an adequate food supply from blooming nectar sources. They are given a pollen substitute to stimulate the production of more bees within the hive.

We give each hive a probiotic because even gut health of a honeybee is important. Essential oils are also given in rotation with different feed methods.

It is important for hive health to have a healthy and strong queen, so we replace queens that are no longer viable.

ZR: Which honey variety has the biggest volume? What is your favorite honey? How much honey do you produce in a good year?

The Wilmers: Our honey production in Minnesota consists of sweet clover, canola, sunflower and wildflower.

The sweet clover and canola honey are the lightest in color and the mildest in taste so that is our favorite.

The type and volume of honey depends on what the farmers have planted each year for crops and the amount of moisture an area receives.

So, honey crops vary each year for this reason, and the number of colonies also will be factored into production totals.

Our honey is extracted from the hives and placed into 275-gallon totes that we will ship to the packer for bottling. The largest number of totes produced in one summer has been 604, equal to 1.9 million pounds.

Some of the labels that carry our honey are Local Hive, Nature’s Nate and Busy Bee.

ZR: Tell us about the makeup of a hive in terms of the queen, foragers, drones, guards and workers and their different roles? How many eggs does a queen lay in her lifetime, and how long does a queen bee typically live? How far does a bee travel away from the hive for food? How much honey does a good hive produce in a year?

The Wilmers: The worker bee has many responsibilities: gathering nectar, guarding the hive and honey, caring for the queen and larvae, keeping the hive clean and producing honey.

When a worker bee hatches and ages, it’s job in the hive changes. They begin as nurse bees, then onto house bees, to guard bees, and finally field bees.

The only job of a drone is to mate with the queen. The queen’s only job is to lay eggs, and she can lay up to 2,000 eggs a day.

When we first started beekeeping, a queen’s lifespan was 3 years. Today, some queens will last less than a year due to many factors: environmental, pesticides, viruses, mites and also damaging the queen while transporting.

The lifespan of a worker bee depends on all of these factors, too. In the winter months a worker bee can live 4-6 months. During the summer, while producing a honey crop, an average worker bee will live up to 6 weeks and produce 1/12 teaspoon of honey in its lifetime.

To produce one pound of honey, bees will fly up to 55,000 miles. They will usually fly two to three miles from their hive to find a nectar source.

ZR: Do you make most of your revenue off the pollination or off the honey?

The Wilmers: That is a difficult question to answer because of the amount of manpower and expense that goes into each process.

We could not support our business by only producing honey or only pollinating the almond crops.

The other part of the equation is the price of honey, which is given to us by the packers.  When foreign honey floods the U.S. market, the price we are given is lower.

When the almond growers are facing obstacles, the price of pollination drops. Such is the story of agriculture.

ZR: There has been a lot of news and research focusing on declining bee health and stresses on the bee populations, particularly wild bees. What are the biggest challenges you face as a beekeeper? Have you noticed trends of declining bee populations? 

The Wilmers: Beekeepers across the nation have endured major colony losses this winter. The biggest challenge for beekeepers right now is keeping their hives alive, and there doesn’t seem to be a cut and dried answer.

Is it poor bee nutrition or Varroa mite, which can destroy a hive along with carrying viruses?

Of course, pesticides are always a challenge, but all agricultural growers and applicators know the toxicity to honeybees and have always been very good to work with.

ZR: What are the opportunities you see as a beekeeper?

The Wilmers: Everyone has begun to realize the importance and health benefits of honey. It is a good feeling to produce a food product that is so natural while also helping with pollination.

The United States will always need beekeepers and their honeybees because there are more than 130 types of fruits, nuts and vegetables pollinated by honeybees.

If you are interested in agriculture and don’t mind hard work, the opportunities to travel the United States pollinating crops is endless from coast to coast.

ZR: Is there anything else you want to share about your operation or beekeeping in general?

The Wilmers: Being a migratory beekeeper is a challenging but rewarding kind of life.

It usually involves working with your family within different generations, and the beekeepers who you will meet across America are just plain, good old folk.

There is nothing better than standing in an orchard on a sunny day and listening to the hum of your bees traveling from tree to tree doing their job.

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