Wendy Mayer-Lochtefeld

Ian Coulson runs his bare fingers along the open gaps of the hive's frames. 'Good beekeepers don't need gloves,' he says. He pries one frame out of the hive and lifts it up to the light. Coulson, the co-founder of the Santa Cruz Bee Guild, is showing me his beehives. There aren't as many as I'd expect. A third of his bees died last year, he tells me. Empty hive boxes lay in the tall grass around his hillside home high in the Santa Cruz Mountains.