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During the spring our gardens are full of many things -- flowers, birds, and if we're
really lucky, honeybees. If you've been keeping up with the news lately you know that the
last few years haven't been good years for honeybees. In fact, the population of them
has hit an all-time low. This is mainly due to a couple of types of destructive mites.
But the population of bees in my garden is on the rise. One of my hives just swarmed.
And I've called in a friend to help me deal with the problem. Since the rule of the game
is one queen bee per hive, when a new queen hatches part of the hive splits. And this
is called a swarm. Before we deal with it, Richard and I inspect the hives for other
queens about to hatch. Having captured a few queen bees, we can now turn attention to the
bees in the tree. We gently remove a section of the limb the bees are clinging to and shake
them into a bucket. As you can see, these little guys are really stirred up. It'll take
a while for them to settle down before they all go into the bucket. And an amazing 95
- 97 percent of them will go back in. Tapping on the side of the hive like this with repeated
motions mimics a sound or a vibration made by the queen. This will attract many of the
bees that are flying around trying to find her. They'll come right into the hive in search
of her. Once most of these little guys are in the bucket, we lightly spray them with
sugar water to keep them from flying around, and then gently slide them into the hive,
and Richard will take them into their new home in the country. This is one of the most
fantastic phenomena to occur in the spring. It's nature's way of creating new colonies
of our friends the endangered honeybee. From the Garden, I'm Allen Smith.