Managed Beehives for Your Property in the Los Angeles Area
Since 2010, The Best Bees Company has offered a unique, turnkey way for individuals and organizations to make a positive impact on the environment. Best Bees is the leading beekeeping service in the greater Los Angeles area.
Our Mission
To expand the bee population while improving the health of honey bees and other pollinators here in California and across the world. Our locally certified beekeepers install and manage hives on your property and use the data we collect to drive the science of pollinator health forward with scientific partners that include Urban Bee Lab, NASA, MIT and National Geographic.
Beekeeping for Your Residential Backyard
If you'd like to save bees, build a healthier environment, pollinate your garden, and have your own honey harvest, then our residential service is perfect for you! We offer turnkey beekeeping, honey harvesting, and DNA analysis designed for homeowners in a wide range of environments. Regardless of the size of your property – whether you garden on a balcony, or have acres of land – we can set up and tend a hive (or several hives!) for you.
Expert Beekeeping
Hand-crafted, all natural equipment will be installed on your property. Ask us about custom-painted hives!
Colonies of docile honeybees will be introduced into your hive at the start of the season.
We can offer suggestions for pollinator-friendly trees, shrubs, and plants appropriate for your garden.
Our beekeepers will visit your hive for monthly maintenance visits.
You'll receive reports on the health of your hive after each beekeeper visit.
Full-time customer service team will be available to you by phone or email.
Honey Harvesting
When the bees produce surplus honey, we'll harvest, process, bottle, and deliver it for you.
If your bees need all the honey they've produced to get through the winter, we'll share surplus honey with you that we collect from hives at our partner apiaries.
Our residential beekeeping clients receive a Honey Guarantee of 5 pounds of honey per hive each year.
All honey from Best Bees is raw, unfiltered honey, delivered with custom honey labels with your name and the honey harvest date.
Data & Analysis On Your Hive
Our beekeepers will collect hive data upon each visit that will go into our proprietary hive health program 'Bzzz.'
This data is shared with our in-house scientific team who partner with other research institutions to study the data from your hive and our network of hives across the country.
As your hive data is studied and shared with partners, we will update you on scientific learnings and discoveries that are driving pollinator health forward.
For an additional fee, we can analyze the DNA analysis of your honey, reporting back to you on the number of species they've pollinated and the relative importance of each species to your bees.
Beekeeping for Your Commercial Property
We offer innovative solutions that can help bring your corporate sustainability programs to life. These include the highest standards of beekeeping, as well as developed workshops and programs that will engage your community – employees, guests, tenants, community leaders and the public – in your sustainability work.
Expert Beekeeping
Hand-crafted, all natural equipment will be installed on your property. Ask us about custom-painted hives!
Colonies of docile honeybees will be introduced into your hives at the start of the season.
We can offer suggestions for pollinator-friendly trees, shrubs, and plants appropriate for your garden.
Our beekeepers will visit your hive for monthly maintenance visits.
You'll receive reports on the health of your hive after each beekeeper visit.
Full-time customer service team will be available to you by phone or email.
Honey Harvesting
When the bees produce surplus honey, we'll harvest, process, bottle, and deliver it for you.
If your bees need all the honey they've produced to get through the winter, we'll share surplus honey with you that we collect from hives at our partner apiaries.
Our corporate beekeeping clients receive a Honey Guarantee of 10 pounds of honey per hive each year.
All honey from Best Bees is raw, unfiltered honey, delivered with custom honey labels with your name and the honey harvest date.
Our beekeeping clients have the option to choose their jar size, and add their own company logo to our cobranded honey labels.
Data & Analysis On Your Hive
Our beekeepers will collect hive data upon each visit that will go into our proprietary hive health program 'Bzzz.'
This data is shared with our in-house scientific team who partner with other research institutions to study the data from your hive and our network of hives across the country.
As your hive data is studied and shared with partners, we will update you on scientific learnings and discoveries that are driving pollinator health forward.
For an additional fee, we can analyze the DNA analysis of your honey, reporting back to you on the number of species they've pollinated and the relative importance of each species to your bees.
Products & Programming
Corporate gifts
We offer many bee products that make great gifts for your tenants, employees, or stakeholders.
Educational Events
Engage your community with educational and hands-on events run by our beekeepers.
Advanced reporting
With advanced data collection at the hive, we deliver bee health and biodiversity metrics.
How Professional Beekeeping Works
Installation
We help you choose an ideal location to establish one or more beehives at your home or workplace.
Maintenance
Our impassioned and experienced beekeepers service your beehives once a month, providing high-quality care and detailed reports.
Harvesting
You keep 100% of the raw honey produced. We'll handle the rest – small batch extraction and bottling with personalized labels.
Research
At every visit, we collect data and share it with our research partners to advance the science of beekeeping and improve the health of pollinators worldwide.
What's Included
What's Included
- Site Evaluation
- Hand-crafted, all-natural beehive equipment installed onsite
- A colony of docile honey bees (Apis mellifera ligustica)
- Monthly maintenance visits and follow up reports
- Advanced scheduling so you can alert your team
- Full-time customer service team available by phone or email
- Raw honey, harvested and bottled just for you
- Replacement colonies provided at no cost
- Fully insured professional service
Los Angeles Service Area
We service hives in a 45-minute driving radius around our Los Angeles office, including the following counties in California:
Los Angeles
Ventura**
Orange
San Bernadino
Unique Challenges and Opportunities to Beekeeping in Los Angeles
Beekeeping Laws in California
Unique Challenges and Opportunities to Beekeeping in Los Angeles
The greatest challenges facing beekeeping in Los Angeles are rooted in water. With the region’s ongoing drought cycles and rising temperatures, forage availability becomes increasingly unpredictable. While California is home to some of the most agriculturally productive land in the U.S., monoculture crops and water restrictions have made diverse, year-round forage harder to find—especially for bees.
Add to that the wildfire threat. As wildfires become more frequent and intense, they can destroy thousands of acres of habitat in a matter of hours, stripping bees of both food and shelter. Post-fire landscapes can also lead to an uptick in invasive species, which often crowd out the native flowering plants that pollinators rely on for nutrition.
In Los Angeles, Best Bees beekeepers must navigate a complex environment—balancing urban sprawl, shifting bloom schedules, and extreme heat events. Monitoring hive health, supplementing nutrition when needed, and selecting microclimates for hive placement are key to successful hive management here.
But there’s also reason for optimism. Southern California’s long growing season and abundance of ornamental and native flowering plants—especially in residential areas—can provide a diverse buffet for pollinators. Our HoneyDNA analysis of LA-based hives often reveals species like lavender, citrus, eucalyptus, and ceanothus (California lilac), demonstrating that even amid environmental challenges, urban bees can find a surprisingly rich variety of forage.
What’s more, as LA continues to embrace green infrastructure—from native plant landscaping to community gardens—our hives are finding more places to thrive. With intentional urban design and pollinator-conscious planting, the city can become not just a place for bees to survive, but to flourish.
Beekeeping Laws in California
Beekeeping in California is not only permitted—it’s widely supported, especially in urban areas like Los Angeles. The climate, biodiversity, and local enthusiasm for sustainability make it an ideal environment for bees. In fact, our Los Angeles hives are some of the most productive in the country, often thriving year-round thanks to the region’s diverse flora and mild winters.
Unlike some states, California requires all beekeepers to register their hives annually with the local County Agricultural Commissioner. This helps protect bee populations by enabling better communication between beekeepers and pesticide applicators. Hive movement within or between counties must also be reported, and each hive must be clearly marked with contact information. At Best Bees, we take care of these requirements for our clients, ensuring full compliance with state protocols and keeping things seamless.
In the City of Los Angeles, residential beekeeping is permitted with some thoughtful guidelines around hive placement, spacing, and safety. For example, hives need to be set back from property lines, positioned in certain areas of the yard, and accompanied by a nearby water source. Local ordinances are designed to keep both bees and people safe, and we’re well-versed in all the nuances of hive siting to make sure our installs meet every requirement.
Beekeeping laws and permitting processes can vary slightly across California’s municipalities—and are often updated. As a company deeply committed to ethical and transparent practices, we continuously monitor local regulations to ensure we’re providing safe, responsible, and fully compliant service across all regions we operate in.
If you're in California and thinking about becoming a pollinator champion, our team is here to help every step of the way.
About Local Honey
Honey production varies from colony to colony, depending on the strength of the queen, the health of the hive, and the availability of nourishment. New colonies tend to produce less honey than established ones. When there is a surplus of honey, we will harvest and jar it for you.
The composition and flavor of honey varies from hive to hive as well, depending on the floral species available to pollinate. This means that honey from your hive will have a unique profile. Tasting it, you are tasting the composite of all the flowers your bees have visited.
In our studies of HoneyDNA, we've found that honey from urban hives includes a much wider range of species – as much as eight times more than honey from rural and suburban hives!
The composition and flavor of honey varies from hive to hive as well, depending on the floral species available to pollinate. This means that honey from your hive will have a unique profile. Tasting it, you are tasting the composite of all the flowers your bees have visited.
In our studies of HoneyDNA, we've found that honey from urban hives includes a much wider range of species – as much as eight times more than honey from rural and suburban hives!
HoneyDNA
We pioneered the process of identifying the exact percentage of various pollen species found in honey through advanced genomic sequencing. Understanding where bees foraged reveals which plants best feed pollinators in the local environment.
Already Have a Hive?
At Best Bees, we're proud to be a part of the local beekeeping community in every area in which we work.
Join our Citizen Scientist movement! Here are some ways you can participate:
- Plant more pollinator habitats on your property
- Use bee-safe pesticide alternatives
- Get involved in local and national lobbying
- Submit your honey for HoneyDNA
You can also post your data to bee Citizen Science programs like iNaturalist and Beecology Project.
We gladly share the learning from our research and our best practices with everyone. To learn more about the findings of our research work, review our white papers.
To watch one of the TED Talks by our Founder and Chief Science Officer Dr. Noah Wilson-Rich, visit our Research page.
To stay abreast of our latest thinking, read our blogs!
Testimonials
Since our founding in 2010, the knowledge and expertise of our beekeeping and customer service teams has helped us build a loyal following among both our commercial and residential customers here in the Los Angeles area. These are a just a few examples of what they have to say about working with us:
Safe
Our honey bees, Apis mellifera ligustica, are the most docile species of honey bees, making our hives extremely safe and the instance of stings very unlikely.
Insured
We have a full insurance policy and can provide a Certificate of Insurance (COI) easily.
Experienced
Our beekeepers are trained to work safely in densely populated urban areas. This includes on balconies, rooftops, and skyscrapers.
Frequently Asked Questions
We provide you with a report on each hive, after every beekeeping visit. These reports include statistics on hive size and health, quantity of honey stores, and the presence of pests and pathogens. If you take advantage of our DNA analysis service, we will provide you with a detailed analysis of the different plant species your bees are pollinating, and the amount each contributes to your honey. The reports, and aggregate learnings across all of our hives, are a testament to your commitment to promoting biodiversity and improving the health of the environment.
We stock our hives with Apis mellifera ligustica, a species of honey bee bred for docility, place them in low-traffic areas and service them with highly trained, locally certified professional beekeepers. Our beehives and beekeepers are fully insured for personal liability and damage. We can provide you with a certificate of insurance (COI) if needed.
It's not essential that forage be immediately available to your bees, as they can travel as much as four miles to find food and water. That said, local sources of nourishment require less energy consumption for bees and make for healthier hives. Most of our clients add pollinator gardens, and rethink their landscaping, once their bees are established and have become an integral part of their corporate family. Pollinator gardens and pollinator friendly landscaping help to beautify your property, provide oases of calming nature for employees and tenants, and can improve your building's LEED certification rating.
We have over 500+ corporate clients, representing industry leaders as Beacon Capital Partners, Four Seasons Hotels, Harvard Business School, JPMorgan Chase, L'Oreal, MIT/Media Lab, and Whole Foods.
There are many creative ways we can work together to engage your stakeholders in beekeeping, and through beekeeping, in your company's ESG initiatives. These include programs such as educational workshops, virtual hive tours, meet-your-beekeeper sessions, keynote speakers, branded hives, signs & honey, as well as events that feature pollinators and honey-based foods and beverages.
Beehives take up very little space – about 8 square feet, and require a footprint of no more than 16" x 22" x 40".
Hives can be installed in any low-traffic area, including rooftops, courtyards, gardens areas, and landscaped grounds. For healthier colonies, we usually place hives where they will get some morning sun, and be protected from high winds. All hive placements will comply with state and municipal requirements. For more information, read our hive placement informational guide.