A visit to local farmers' markets will almost always include a vendor of local honey, produced by bees flitting among the flowers that are just starting to bloom all around Petaluma and highlighting the growing beekeeping movement in town.
Indeed, there are now 38 active beekeepers within city limits, according to Christine Kurtz, president of the Sonoma County Beekeeper's Association.
According to local beekeepers Ettamarie Peterson, of Peterson's Pumpkin and Honey Farm and Rick Wallenstein, of Lavender Honey Farm, local honey is healthier because the bees use nectars from blossoms that contain beneficial minerals and vitamins and honey is a natural antibiotic. Commercial honeybees frequently are fed white sugars or corn syrup, instead of blossom nectar - so the honey they produce is a product of those processed sugars.
And those honey bees that are allowed to fly freely to find food also act as pollinators to help crops bear fruits and vegetables.
Farmer Ettamarie Peterson knows this first-hand: she is the recognized "queen bee" of beekeeping in Sonoma County.
You will frequently find her at farmers' markets or local fairs with her demonstration hive, answering questions about bees and their habits. She has been a beekeeper for about 17 years, since just before she retired from teaching in Petaluma schools.
Since then, she has dedicated her teaching efforts to the science of beekeeping, both for children, through 4-H classes and school trips, and adults, through the Sonoma County Beekeepers' Association.
Peterson says it takes between 8 and 12 bees to make a teaspoon of honey; a productive hive can make between 100 and 250 pounds of honey a year. She maintains anywhere between 5 and 12 hives on her own property, which act as pollinators for her Pumpkin Farm. They also produce honey that she sells from her farm store.
Rick Wallenstein of Lavender Bee Farm became a beekeeper almost by happenstance, when he and a friend were out running and decided to start their own hive.
As the owner and operator of DunRite Maintenance in Petaluma, Wallenstein began his beekeeping and lavendar growing as a side business that eventually grew to about 100 active hives, located throughout the south county.
He estimates he now produces between 2,500 and 4,000 pounds of honey each year, and that he sells every bit of it. While he started by selling his honey from the farm and in the farmers' markets, he now markets it through a website and sends it to buyers all over the United States.
He operates his honey processing out of the 1908 barn located on his property, and has begun working with local Sonoma county wineries, such as Coppola, Simi and Chateau St, Jean, for food, wine and honey pairings.
A newcomer to the Petaluma area is Bobby Foehr of Coastal Hills Farm, where he maintains about 10 hives. Foehr came to Petaluma from Pt. Reyes about two years ago. While he began beekeeping as a hobby in Pt. Reyes in 2008, he has not seen his Petaluma hives grow as rapidly as he hoped, and so has recently been finding new locations for them. He explained that bees need a good source of food to produce honey, and there does not seem to be an adequate supply on his farm.
In an effort to address that, he recently received a grant from the National Resource Conservation Service to plant hedgerows on his land. He plans on planting flowering hedges, which he believes will provide blossoms for the bees and protection for his chickens.
A chief issue among local beekeepers is colony collapse disorder, a largely unexplained phenomenon which has greatly diminished the bee population in California and can completely wipe out a hive. Theories about the cause of the problem range from mites to pesticides to genetically modified crops. While there is no consensus on the cause, there are a number of ways for the general population to help honey bees, including hosting a hive or planting bee-friendly flowers.
In 2009, Petaluma City Council passed an ordinance which allowed beekeeping within the city limits, thanks in part to Peterson's advocacy.
The county beekeeping association publishes a list of flowers that are bee-friendly, available at sonomabees.org. The yellow dot project, spearheaded by Diane Sylvestre and the association, enlists the help of local nurseries and plant wholesalers to market bee friendly plants, identified with a yellow dot.
(Contact Lynn King at argus@arguscourier.com)
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