creative Bee ing
Beekeeper turns beeswax into holiday ornaments
Story by Judy Farah • Photos by Silas Fallstich
When Bill Lewis took up beekeeping to earn a merit badge with the Boy Scouts, he never imagined it would become his profession for nearly three decades. Lewis went on to become an Eagle Scout, graduate college and work in the aerospace industry. But after 10 years, he became restless. He said he didn’t like sitting behind a desk and working on projects that never came to fruition. When a friend offered him the opportunity to do maintenance at his horse- boarding facility on 600 acres in Little Tujunga Canyon in the San Gabriel Mountains, Lewis took it. He ditched his high-paying job for one offering less money and physically harder work. He hasn’t looked back. “It was quite scary, because it was (trading) a really good paycheck for one that wasn’t anywhere close. I really didn’t have a plan for creating my own business at the time,” Lewis said. It was right around then the bees found him again. “Bees moved back into my life—in the wall of my house—and I had to do something about it,” Lewis said. He tracked the bees in his wall to their home in the ground. “At the same time, I discovered 11 colonies had been abandoned and buried in the weeds on the neighbor’s property. I adopted those 11 colonies,” he said. Lewis harvested “so much honey” he started selling it at craft fairs as a side business. It eventually turned into a full-time job.
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