• Font Size    

Most Popular Videos Featured On KDKA.com

Pittsburgh Festivities Kickoff Holidays
E-mail

Close Window E-mail This Page

KD Country: Honey Bees

Required fields are marked with an asterisk(*)

The information you provide will be used only to send the requested e-mail and will not be used to send any other e-mail communications. Read more in our Privacy Policy

Send E-mail

   Print     Share +   
Jul 8, 2009 6:52 pm US/Eastern

KD Country: Honey Bees

Reporting
Dave Crawley
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) ― When construction workers and beekeepers opened the wall of an abandoned building in Braddock in April it created quite a buzz.

Tens of thousands of honeybees were making a home in the wall. The bees were transferred to fourteen new locations, including a rooftop garden at the Pittsburgh Zoo and PPG Aquarium.

"We were fortunate enough that we could plant all these type of plants including small trees up here," gardener Glenn Zugehar tells me. He says the honey making visitors are more than welcome.

"We've been talking about having bees here at the zoo for the past two or three years. And the timing was just right," he said.

He invited KDKA's Dave Crawley to join him for a closer look at the wooden "hive" near the far wall of the garden.

Dave found comfort with the idea he was with an experienced beekeeper, until Zugehar said, "This is my first experience."

As if that wasn't enough, he added, "I've always been afraid of bees."

Then Dave recalled that he's not a beekeeper. He's a gardener. But as he lifts the lid on the bees' new home, and pulls out one of a dozen honeycombs filled with the insects, it's apparent that these residents are docile.

"We've barged into their house here, pulled out one of the floors of their house, and they're not really bothering us at all," Zugehar says.

The bees have just started working on their honeycombs where the queen will lay her eggs. Bee colonies have declined considerably in recent years. The rooftop garden at the zoo is one small step on the road to recovery.

"They pollinate up to one-third of the food we eat," the gardener says. "So we need these little guys."

(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)

Featured Slideshows On KDKA.com

You need the latest Flash player to view video content.
Click here to download.

Click here to bypass this detection if you already have the latest Flash Player.

Pets & Animals

Top News Stories

© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.