We meet so many different people on the job as photojournalists and get to see a lot of the world right around us that we probably would not witness in any other business.  I love that.

My first assignment today was to cover a story on the honeybee population. Larry Pender of Jubilee Honeybee Company in Camarillo introduced me to his beekeepers, brothers Tomas and Santos Gomez and a few thousand of approximately 1,280,000 Italian honeybees contained in the spot where we stood on a blueberry farm in Camarillo. Occasionally a bee would smack into me or get in my hair, not a problem.  Honeybees are pretty docile, a puff of smoke from smoldering burlap in a smoker helps that quality along.

Pender says that there has been a big decline in the honeybee population over the last five years and that while no one source can be pinpointed, systemic pesticides used in agriculture is a culprit. I asked if global warming was a factor, but he said it was not.

In this frame, Santos Gomez stands by while Larry Pender holds up a worker bee, top, and a drone.  The story runs Thursday in the business section, should be cool, lots of photos on the web!