Leadership
Yvonne Koehnen
“The beekeeping livelihood is so unique and interesting, and I think that it will be fun to share it with visitors. Bees are so extremely vital for our food production. Everyone wants to learn more about bees and how to protect them; this educational center will do that. The Honeybee Discovery Center will become a destination; there are no other such facilities in the United States.”
Founder and Board President
Carolina Burreson
“At the Honeybee Discovery Center, we offer a showcase of honeybees and other pollinators in an engaging and interactive learning environment. Our enriching educational program and continued curriculum provide a memorable experience and ensure visitors return to discover even more about these fascinating little creatures. As a farmer and apiary owner, it is also important to me to find opportunities to collaborate with farmers to help sustain hive health and support the health of our agricultural industry.”
Chief Executive Officer
Donica O'Laughlin
“I believe we need to educate people of all ages about the vital role of honeybees and other pollinators in the production of food. I want people to know and understand what each of us can do at any age to help save the honeybees.”
Board Vice President
Laurel Hill-Ward
“I believe that educating others with a Bee Curriculum through the Honeybee Discovery Center and securing funding to continue that mission not only protects beekeeping but more importantly, protects bees and other pollinators, which are vital to our world. I’m committed to giving back to the profession that has fed our family for 5 generations.”
Board Secretary
Pete Carr
“Bringing in the science and education surrounding our rich history of Beekeeping is a natural fit for Orland, the Queen Bee Capital, and I’m proud to be a part of the vision for the Honeybee Discovery Center.”
Board Member / Orland City Manager
About Our Founder
Yvonne Koehnen, 83-years old of Glenn, CA, the matriarch of the Honeybee Discovery Center, stands with her family at the 2022 Common Threads North award dinner where she was honored with a philanthropic agriculture award. Her roots are deep in agriculture from bountiful giving.
Leaving a Beekeeper’s Legacy
In 1962, Yvonne Millar married a beekeeper, Bob Koehnen, who lived 8 miles up the road in Glenn CA…and so began her life and love of honeybees. She, too, worked in the family business and together they raised their sons Kalin and Kamron, who currently oversee the nuts and apiaries operations for C.F. Koehnen & Sons.
In 2022, the Koehnen family is celebrating 117 years since their first beehive.
Bob Koehnen was the second born son to C.F. Koehnen. He was known as an innovator and agriculturalist. In an article for Bee Culture, Marla Spivak of the University of Minnesota called him “inspired — unique in that he was an inventor who strove to make bee management more efficient.”
For more than 55 years, Yvonne Koehnen was involved in the springtime sales and the packaging of bees and queens. A graduate of California State University, Chico, she was a teacher by trade but also an innovator. Prototypes of various sizes of shipping boxes, inspired by the Rossman container, were built by Yvonne Koehnen to fit the new cages. She found that 160 small cages fit into a box that previously held 104 larger cages.
Yvonne is very passionate about bees and sharing the importance of bees with the general public. She has been an active member of the California Beekeepers Association for many years. One of Yvonne’s projects was putting together a beekeeping display for the Chico Museum in 2009. After the opening, she visited many offices and local elementary schools in Butte and Glenn Counties inviting the students to visit and learn about bees. Her exhibit about bees was the highest attended ever at the Chico Museum.
After 53 years of marriage and working alongside each other, Yvonne lost her dear husband Bob Koehnen in 2015. To preserve his story, she formed a committee and has generously donated her time and her treasure to work towards preserving his legacy at the Honeybee Discovery Center.
This dedicated group of volunteers steers the vision for The Center, their undying commitment is to continue to bring awareness and increase knowledge about the critical role and importance of honeybees and other pollinators, and their ties not only to agricultural practices, maintenance of global food production, and the local and global environment.
— Executive board members of the Honeybee Discovery Center.
Bob Koehnen was a master of inventions. He hired Galen Jantzen to work in the Koehnen’s shop in 1974. Jantzen helped Bob build out his visions. In the early 90s, Jantzen built a production machine for the mini cages. C.F. Koehnen & Sons has been producing queen cages for 45 years and now ships 1.25 million mini cages annually throughout the U.S.
Bob’s inventions included:
Perfected an assembly-line system for making up queen-mating nuclei, synchronizing each step of an impressively large operation.
Devised an early machine to fill syrup into package feeding cans automatically.
Developed the California mini queen cage, which remains a standard.
Developed the larger Wen-Koe queen cages. They were built with a machine, commissioned from an engineer, that adapted a technology from door construction to apply the screens.
An ingenious mechanism for cutting queen cells apart when they come out of the cell builder.
A towable bee-moving forklift with four forks, able to move four pallets of colonies at one time, then spread the pallets apart. His son Kalin said that they can move 1000 colonies a day with the double forklift.
Development of the bank-out unloading cart system for harvesting almonds and walnuts. It has a conveyer that unloads onto another vehicle without stopping, reducing time in the field.