Show Me The Honey

“Beekeeping is an art; we should all be doing it,” says Mark Haag, a lecturer at Cal Poly Pomona’s College of Agriculture and founder of the campus’s new apiary program, which debuted in fall 2018. “It’s doable. It’s safe. It’s important, no matter where you are.”

The dedicated 1.5-acre meadow on Cal Poly Pomona’s campus is now chest-high in wildflowers that provide forage—aka bee food—for the 31 hives. This field acts as a living lab for Haag’s bee science class, which he co-teaches with Cal Poly colleague and lecturer Melody Wallace, DVM. (Haag also offers public workshops on campus for local beekeepers.)

Haag’s goal is nothing less than creating a world-renowned bee program at Cal Poly Pomona. To that end, he has begun bee research—a first for CPP—on mites that hurt the insects’ health and is also researching ways to raise non-Africanized queen bees for smaller beekeepers in Southern California during the winter months. (Local beekeepers often have difficulty procuring a queen with the desired docile Italian honeybee genetics within the ideal time window, which is winter and early spring.)

Thanks to the temperate climate in the southern part of the state, honeybees are active year-round. And with many cities lifting bans on urban beekeeping, the need for teaching the public continues to grow.  

If you have a hive or simply want to attract more bees to your yard, here are some options planted by CPP students for bee forage:

• Bee balm
  
• Black-eyed Susans
• Purple coneflowers
• Dianthus
• Hummingbird mint
• Lavender
• Sea lavender
• Shasta daisies