A HONEY OF A DILEMMA BEEKEEPERS FEEL FIRES' EFFECTS.

Byline: Andrea Cavanaugh Staff Writer

When fires roared through eastern Ventura County this fall, Red and Ann Bennett watched much of next year's honey crop go up in smoke.

The October blazes in Simi Valley and Piru wiped out hundreds of commercial beehives and blackened tens of thousands of acres of pasture - the native coastal sage scrub that bees browse to produce Ventura County's premium honey.

``We've lost our source of local, high-quality honey,'' said Red Bennett, who owns Ventura County's only commercial processing facility near Piru. ``We're going to have to try to get honey from out of the area.''

Bennett doesn't yet know how the loss of pastureland will affect the 1.1 million pounds of honey he usually processes each year. Experts estimate it will take three to five years for the pasture to recover.

Bennett's 400 hives were untouched by the flames, but other local beekeepers weren't so lucky. About one-third of Jack Smith's 1,000 hives burned in two locations near Moorpark and South Mountain near Santa Paula.

Smith, 74, has been managing bees from his home in the upper Ojai Valley for 30 years. He lost more than the bees and the wooden boxes that house them, which cost about $100 each - he'll also do without the honey they would have produced.

``In the spring, it's going to hurt desperately,'' Smith said. ``It's a real disaster.''

Fillmore beekeeper David Mitchell lost just three of his 700 hives when flames surrounded all four of his locations along the Santa Clara River.

But Mitchell, 39, was devastated when he saw the blackened pasture he counts on to supply his bees with pollen.

``It's cooked, completely cooked,'' he said. ``Next year I'm going to be bumming.''

The loss of hives and pasture is just another blow in a series of misfortunes that have plagued domestic beekeepers over the past 15 years. Drought, disease, parasites and cheap imported honey have hurt the industry and kept wholesale prices low.

Restrictions on imports finally have driven the price of domestic honey up to about $1.50 per pound - up from about 50 cents per pound a few years ago.

The conversion of much of the Santa Clara Valley from citrus to avocado trees also has hurt the beekeepers.

Pollen from lemon and orange trees creates a light-color, delicate honey prized around the world. Avocado honey is darker and less in demand.

Those factors have thinned Ventura County's professional beekeepers from more than a dozen 15 years ago to just a handful today, Ann Bennett said.

``It's not a get-rich-quick scheme,'' she said. ``Beekeeping is equated with dry-land farming. It's feast or famine.''

California is the nation's No. 2 honey producer, with $30 million in sales last year, but it is only a tiny fraction of the state's $27.5 billion agriculture industry.

Ventura County beekeepers produced $625,000 worth of honey last year, putting it far behind avocados, citrus and a host of other crops.

Although avocado pollen creates honey less desirable to consumers, growers and beekeepers play a key role for one another. Avocados are the only locally grown crop that relies on bees for pollination.

Beekeepers, who usually pay property owners to keep their hives in citrus groves or sage scrub, are paid up to $70 per acre to place their hives among avocado trees.

The loss of hives to the fire could create a problem for growers next spring, said Chris Dryden, a supervisor with Mission Produce, an Oxnard avocado packer.

``I think we're going to have a shortage of good healthy hives,'' Dryden said. ``It's not going to be as easy.''

Beekeeping is hard, hot work during the busy spring and summer seasons - honeycombs must be removed from the hives at midday, and the hives are moved during the coolest hours when the bees are least active, usually in the middle of the night.

``It's an extremely labor-intensive business,'' said Eric Mussen, an apiculturist at the University of California, Davis. ``They work 16-hour days during the summer. Their hourly wage is horrid, but they're doing it because they love it.''

Despite the losses from the fire, local beekeepers say they will continue to pursue their passion.

``Some can only see dollar signs, but for others it's a way of life,'' Smith said. ``We've taken a setback, but we're not out of business yet.''

Andrea Cavanaugh, [phone]

andrea.cavanaugh(at)dailynews.com

CAPTION(S):

6 photos

Photo:

(1 -- 2 -- color; 1 ran in Simi edition only) Red and Ann Bennett, top, show off one layer of a beehive at their honey farm in Piru. With the fires of October burning all the sage, the Bennetts are worried about production of their No. 1 seller, sage honey, top.

(3 -- color -- ran in SIMI edition only) Fire has destroyed the sage plants used by beekeepers to make honey.

(4 -- 5 -- ran in SIMI edition only) (The honeybee on the sign outside Red and Ann Bennett's honey farm in Piru, above, will have to work a lot harder to gather pollen, after fires destroyed thousands of acres of sage plants used to make honey. The bees, right, usually produce about 1.1 million pounds of honey each year.)

(6) Red Bennett is one of several beekeepers in Ventura County who are worried about production for the next few years, after wildfires devastated the sage brush they use to make honey.

David Sprague/Staff Photographer