Descanso resident named American Honey Queen
By Miriam Raftery
February 18, 2026 (Descanso) -- You could call it sweet success. The American Beekeeping Federation has chosen Delanie Craighead of Descanso as the 2026 American Honey Queen.
The winner was crowned during the American Beekeeping Federation Conference and Tradeshow in Mobile, Alabama at a time when interest in beekeeping is buzzing.
Delanie Craighead, the daughter of Don and Laurie Craighead in Descanso. She is a graduate of the University of California, Davis, and earned a bachelor’s degree in animal biology and a minor in veterinary medical entomology. She previously worked as a Peace Corps volunteer in South America and now works as a kennel attendant at a dog daycare facility. In her free time, she enjoys volunteering for various organizations, hiking with her dog, reading, collecting and identifying insect species.
Before she was named as the American Honey Queen, she served as the 2025 California Honey Queen. She will spend the next year promoting the beekeeping industry throughout the United States in a variety of venues, including fairs, festivals, schools, media interviews, and virtual presentations.
She is the first American Honey Queen from the State of California in the program’s 60-plus-year history.
The win harkens back to our region’s history, however, since beekeeper John Harbison, for whom nearby Harbison canyon was named, was once the largest honey producer in the world in the 19th century, leading the way for San Diego County to become a major honey-making region during California’s Golden Age of Beekeeping.
California remains the third top honey producer in the nation as of 2024. Now here’s the local news buzz: in 2023, honey production enjoyed a renaissance locally, with production surging by 264%, with honey products locally valued at over 4.7 million dollars.
The growth comes after the county and local cities eased zoning restrictions to make beekeeping easier in urban and suburban areas, a recognition of the importance of protecting bees as pollinators following declines in bee populations in recent years.
The good news is that despite climate change, pesticides and other threats to bees that dropped the number of bee hives by around 10 million over a decade, bee populations across the nation are now showing signs of recovery, Marketplace.com reports.
Over a million new colonies have been added in the past five years.—and while you might not think of honeybees as livestock, beekeeping is now the fastest growing livestock segment in the U.S. economy.