ALL OF MARIN COUNTY’S OPEN LAND, all those cows and grasses, and there is no nectar. Even the best conservation efforts don’t provide enough healthy forage for honey bees, according to a West Marin mead maker.
At Heidrun Meadery in Point Reyes Station, there is a concerted effort to cultivate honey bees through increasing biodiversity. Heidrun produces sparkling mead from a variety of honeys using traditional methods similar to those used to make French Champagne.
Since moving his operation to a former cattle ranch 15 years ago, owner Gordon Hull has planted native and flowering plants to support yearlong forage for his honey bee colonies. But according to Heidrun’s bee manager Bonnie Morse, it takes a long time for those to produce honey because it is surrounded by grazing lands.
“Bees in San Francisco can make way more honey than bees in Marin,” said Morse, who holds master beekeeper certificates from Cornell University and the Eastern Apiculture Society. “Think about the wide open spaces. What’s out there? Cows. They graze everything down.”
She said the only biodiverse areas are found on a strip of land between the road and the fence. The native trees that grow in the region are not nectar-producing, nor are the lush green rye grasses that carpet the area’s picturesque slopes.
“A hundred and fifty years ago they would have been covered with California poppies and lupin,” Morse said. “Because of the cows that’s not there anymore. So, Central and West Marin is a horrible place for honey bees.”
Honey changes everything
Heidrun Meadery has a robust population of native pollinators because the owner has gone out of his way to cultivate flowering and native plants. Hull’s efforts have been supported by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and local nonprofits Point Blue Conservation Science and Marin Agricultural Land Trust, among others.
“We make about four or five varietals [of mead] from our own honeys, and those are from apiaries around the greater Bay Area,” Hull said. “We have hives down in Bolinas, we have hives up on Sonoma Mountain, in about a dozen different places around the Bay Area. We make many other varietals from honeys that we buy from other beekeepers around the world.”
Inside the tasting room, Heidrun Meadery manager Michael Zilbar pours a glass of champagne-style mead.
Hull began his career working as an environmental geologist. He worked in a brewery for a while before experimenting with honey fermentation.
“It’s such a beautiful substance, to be making wine from flower nectar is just gorgeous,” he said.
He found a recipe to make a sparkling Dry Brut. That first batch tasted very good, he said, but the same honey was not available for the second batch, so he used honey from another beekeeper and found it tasted different.
“The only thing that changed was the honey,” Hull said.
Since then, Hull has turned to small farmers who grow distinct crops to find monofloral honeys made from a single flower. Carrot blossom, chicory, blackberries, macadamia nuts and oranges all render distinctly different tones to his line of sparkling meads.
Mites, viruses and malnutrition
In recent years, honey bee populations in the U.S. have suffered catastrophic losses.
A 2025 nationwide survey of 842 beekeepers representing 72% of the managed honey bees in the U.S. found losses in over half the colonies. It was attributed to a viral infection, a parasitic mite, and lack of proper nutrition. In response, the California State Beekeepers Association recommends expedited approvals of miticides and improved bee nutrition.
Morse said climate change is also causing a decrease in the nutritional content of pollen.
A 2025 study in the journal Scientific Reports found that heat-stressed flowering plants showed significant reductions in pollen protein and several individual amino acids. Native bees fed heat-stressed pollen were seven times more likely to die compared to those fed non-stressed pollen.
“Bees in San Francisco can make way more honey than bees in Marin. Think about the wide open spaces. What’s out there? Cows. They graze everything down.”
Bonnie Morse, Heidrun Meadery bee manager
“I think the bigger contributing factor of climate is just the loss of habitat,” said Morse.
Honey bees aren’t native to the U.S., Morse said. They were first brought to Jamestown, Virginia, in 1622 by colonists for honey and candle wax. They didn’t make it to California until 1853. There are 4,000 species of native bees, she said. Most of them are solitary and nest in the ground, but they still need healthy forage to thrive as pollinators.
“As I drive around Marin County, I really see a food desert for insects,” Morse said. “But along the Highway 101 corridor, right around where most neighborhoods are, that’s where most honey production is in Marin. Two hives in Corte Madera can make more honey than 15 hives in Marshall.”
Marin’s beekeepers are hobbyists, but most people still aren’t planting enough food for their bees, she said. A lot of the plants that are available at big box stores have been cultivated for pretty flowers, but they don’t provide any pollen or nectar, and native shrubs get pruned before blossoming. Morse once surveyed 25 front yards in San Rafael and found an average of 4.7 plants per yard that could support bees.
She referenced advice from bestselling author and entomologist Doug Tallamy, who urges everyone to address the biodiversity crisis by adding native plants to their yards and removing invasive ones anywhere they can.
“He estimates that we need at least 70% native plants in order to preserve biodiversity,” she said. “These front yards had like a tenth of a percent of native plants. That’s a huge leap to 70%.”
“It’s amazing how many homes have hardly any forage for any type of bee,” Morse said. “The lack of leaf litter in urban gardens can be problematic since it doesn’t provide overwintering habitat for insects, and the abundance of mulch isn’t helpful for native bees.”
A declining tradition
Hull said another big challenge is that the beekeepers that are pollinating our crops are aging out.
“It’s difficult to get new young people involved,” he said. “It’s super hard work.”
Morse said average pollination fees are about $210 per bee colony, and thousands are needed per acre. Solitary native bees won’t work, but European honey bee colonies can be packed up and trucked around.
“Our commercial agricultural system was only possible because they do that,” she said. “I think it was 2.4 million [colonies] that had to come to California last year. It’s the largest pollination event in the world. It’s frequently multi-generational families. It’s not a huge community.”
Rows of lavender are cultivated to add flavor hues to the honey that is used to make the sparkling mead at Heidrun Meadery near Point Reyes Station on Monday, April 13, 2026.
The California State Beekeepers Association website also noted a lack of support for the U.S. honey market. Seventy-four percent of all honey sold in the U.S. is imported, but most of it includes additives, like sugar or apple juice, not pure honey.
“Honey laundering is a major problem in the U.S.,” Morse said.
In West Marin, some ranchers are offering beekeepers leases to hold their colonies during the offseason, but there’s no food out there, she said.
“They’re just fed sugar syrup, it seems totally cruel to me,” Morse said. “These ranchers are bringing millions of pollinators onto their land where there isn’t anything to eat except yellow star-thistle. The cows can’t eat star-thistle. The ranchers don’t want star-thistle. But the bees are pollinating it and so it grows.”
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