Honey Festival

At eight on the morning of the Westmorland Honey Festival, the Westmorland Fire Department is already serving pancakes. On January 17, 2026, Tina Cruz, whose husband, Sergio Cruz, is the town’s fire chief, figured she had handed out about 100 plates of pancakes, eggs and bacon by 8:55. She had volunteered at the festival for 15 years. The breakfast money goes to fire equipment and to walkers and wheelchairs for senior citizens whose insurance does not cover them. At the 2023 breakfast in the Westmorland Youth Center, bottles of Valley honey from Avery Girl and The Wax Plant stood on the tables in place of syrup.

The festival runs from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. on one Saturday, in Westmorland City Park and the streets beside it off South Center Street. The Imperial Valley Regional Chamber of Commerce puts it on. Valley beekeepers set out free samples of local honey, and food, craft and honey stands line the street.

Powder, a parade, and a spelling bee

The Honey Run 5K starts the day at 7:30. The chamber puts the start line behind City Hall, and in 2026 the race was sponsored by 4:13 Fitness and ran until 8:45. Walkers and strollers enter alongside runners, and every registered entrant gets a festival t-shirt and a honey bear. In 2023 the welcome banner over the start hung from towers of stacked bee boxes, and some runners wore bee costumes. The parade forms at Little Citizens Park at 7:30 and steps off at eight. In 2021 it was a small parade around City Hall Park.

The color run follows. In 2023 it was a Kids Color Run for kindergarten through sixth grade, sponsored by Victoria Homes, laid out as a flagged semicircle around the basketball court. Parents and volunteers threw colored powder as the children bounded through, and the children treated it as a contest to see who could finish the most colorful. By 2026 the Calexico Chronicle photographed 5K color runners being doused with powder as they crossed the finish line.

The vendors in 2023 stood along the south side of the park, selling kettle corn, lemonade, carne asada tacos, shaved ice, beaded jewelry and secondhand accessories. A bright ocean-blue truck on South F Street, Antonio’s Baja Catch 22, took taco orders all day. Gerardo Antonio named it for his boat. He turned to cooking after a career as a correctional officer in the Valley, and he blends Mexican and Filipino flavors in his marinade. “I make my own batters and marinades, I’ve been working on them my whole adult life,” he said.

Through the day people gather in the shade around the park stage. In 2026 a DJ played between events and dancers from Las Flores Del Valle performed. The spelling bee there is, by the chamber’s account, a tradition from the first festival. Fourth through sixth graders compete in one round and seventh and eighth graders in another, and in 2023 every speller wore a bright yellow shirt, bee antennas and bumblebee sunglasses. Under the house rules, the last speller standing must spell the word a rival missed and then one more. Jody Chan of Faith Academy won the younger division that way in 2023, finishing on “hangar.” Her sister Zoey took the older division with “compatriots” and closed the bee with “pilgrimages.” Both won their divisions again in 2024, over words like “jacobean” and “enervating.” In 2026 Jody, by then a sixth grader, took first in her division of the coloring contest, and the spelling titles went to fourth grader Daniel Hinojos (the Chronicle spells it Hinojosa) and seventh grader Carlee Romero.

Essay winners are crowned King Bee and Queen Bee and read their work from the stage. In 2023 seventh- and eighth-grade Queen Bee Brooke Garneau wrote about learning as a student with dyslexia: “I believe that anyone can overcome their physical or mental struggles … and learn to do things differently.” In 2024 Imperial Valley College freshman Loui-Brandon Arenas read “Hard Work and Honeybees.” A raffle of prizes donated by local businesses follows the awards. In 2026 the prizes included gym memberships and dirt bikes. “My raffle ticket didn’t win, but it was still worth it to come out here,” said a Brawley resident eating kettle corn in the shade.

Five stings a day

Two families have sold honey at the festival since its early years. Victor Sanchez Jr. of Sanchez Bees Inc. is a second-generation beekeeper. In 2026 he had kept bees for 42 years and ran about 1,800 to 2,000 colonies in peak season. He makes local honey with products from the Valley and Riverside. Visitors most often ask him how often he gets stung. “On an average work day, five times,” he said in 2024. “I tell people, if you gotta sit in traffic every day to get to work, you just get used to it.” His tip in 2023 was to put honey in oatmeal. He takes the November festival as the start of the holiday season: “College kids come home to see their families, other people come back home, so it’s the start of meeting through the holidays.”

A few stands away is Avery Girl Honey, the retail label of Ashurst Bee Company. In 2024 its booth showed a beehive behind glass. Bryan Ashurst started the company in 1991 as the fourth Ashurst generation to keep bees commercially. It began with a few hives and now runs thousands of colonies in Southern California and in Montana under the Fairview Honey name. Its main work is pollinating alfalfa seed, almonds, avocados, citrus, melons and onion seed. Kenny Ashurst, whose grandfather, father and sons are all beekeepers, said in 2026 that the family moves bees to Texas, California, Montana and North Dakota. “It’s all I know,” he said. Richard Ashurst, a co-owner, said in 2024 that people have bought more local honey since the festival began, where before they used to just buy it in the store. “Citrus honey tastes like citrus,” he said. “But if you buy it in the store, they just mix all the honey together by color.”

That year Amy Loper set up a display of articles and photographs on the history of beekeeping in Westmorland inside the Westmorland Lions Club building.

Busy Bee and Beekeeper of the Year

The morning ceremony on the stage gives out two awards. Beekeeper of the Year, as the Chronicle described it in 2024, goes to the beekeeper with the most nominations from the beekeeping community. Busy Bee of the Year goes to a resident who has done well by Westmorland. Victor Sanchez and city clerk Darlene Berber each won in 2019 and again in 2021. Brandon Ashurst of Brandon Ashurst Pollination was named Beekeeper in 2023, and Justina Cruz, who hosts free food events in the park, was named Busy Bee. In 2024 John Allen got past his reservations about standing before a large crowd and accepted his first Beekeeper award.

In 2026 the Beekeeper award went to Harold Brown, owner of H.B. Honey for about 30 years. His bees pollinate alfalfa, onions and cantaloupes. His family had kept the award a secret, and some relatives traveled from afar to see it. “To keep it quiet like this … I just want to thank you for everything,” Brown said, laughing. “A lot of hard work down the road, but hey, never give up, that’s what I always say.” Chamber president Victor Nava read a certificate from Assemblyman Jeff Gonzalez praising Brown for “preserving the tradition of beekeeping within our community.” Of the work itself, Brown said, “You never stop working them. … There’s never a dull moment.” The Busy Bee award went to Jackie Loper, a lifelong Valley resident and formerly Imperial’s community development director and public services director.

Honey capital, per capita

Westmorland, Kenny Ashurst explained, is known as “the honey capital of the world because there were more beekeepers in this town for the population than there were anywhere.” Richard Ashurst remembers his grandfather pressing to have the town named Honey Capital of the World, and the festival beginning as a way to promote honey. Sanchez says he has been part of it since day one. The 2023 festival was the 18th.

At some point the festival had six honey vendors. After a year in hibernation, it came back on November 20, 2021, under the Imperial Valley Regional Chamber, which was formed from the former El Centro, Imperial and Westmorland chambers. The chamber took it over to support the city of Westmorland. There were 80 vendors that year but only two honey sellers, Sanchez Bees and Ashurst/Avery Girl, which Sanchez called a little sad. A boxing exhibition ran that morning at Mono’s Gym nearby. “It’s changed, but in a positive way,” said Julissa Ayala of the chamber. Melisa Barajas, a lifelong resident, had attended every festival. Zach Fierro had driven down from San Diego for four years with his girlfriend, a former resident. “We come for family, and I like the neighborhood feel to it all,” he said. “We recognize everybody who shows.”

The chamber gave the festival a theme each year after that. In 2023 it was “BEElieve in yourself — BEE the best you!” That morning chamber president Sherie Cowie walked the street checking on vendors, dressed as a bumblebee in black with a yellow tutu and an antenna headband. In 2024 the theme was “Bee the Change — Save the Bees.”

The 20th festival was set for November 15, 2025. Two days earlier the city posted a notice that a coming storm had postponed it to January 17, 2026. Held under the theme “Bee the Light,” it drew a large crowd. Shawn Wilcock, a founding board member of the chamber, said vendors had worried about the move, “because we usually do this before Christmas,” and about competition from the Tamale Festival in Heber. “But lots of people came out.” The chamber’s listing gives November 21 for the 21st annual festival.