DON'T WORRY, BEE HAPPY GLENDALE MAN HAS BECOME AN EXPERT ON APIAN WAYS.

GLENDALE - So, who do you call when a swarm of bees decides to set up house in your back yard?

Not the Glendale Humane Society or any of the other city humane societies, because they don't make house calls for bee control.

``We don't have enough little leashes,'' jokes Leslie Eppick, executive director of the Glendale Humane Society.

And you thought these animal people were all work and no play.

Eppick will give you the name, though, of some people on her approved beebusters list who will come out to your house to get rid of your swarm.

If you're into nonviolence and want the bees taken alive, ask for Herb Harder's number. He's a former pathologist from Glendale Adventist Hospital who got serious about beekeeping instead of golf after he retired in 1991.

Right now, Herb's got seven hives in the back yard of his Chevy Chase Canyon home that he'll be taking up to a friend's five-acre ranch in Acton pretty soon because seven hives in Glendale is legally too many, but in Acton anything goes.

I can think of a lot of ways to spend my retirement years, but none of them include suiting up in gloves, veil, hat and bee suit, and going over to Sherry Green's back yard to do battle with a swarm of bees that has decided Sherman Oaks isn't a bad place to live.

Sherry is Herb's best customer. She's called him out to her place so many times, she sends him a Christmas card every year with a See's candy gift certificate in it.

``He's a really kind man who respects life,'' Sherry says. ``It's fascinating to watch him work.''

Fascinating - if you're standing behind a screen door.

It's unusual, Herb says, bees coming back to the same back yard year after year.

``Bees usually never swarm to the same place twice, but for some reason they love Sherry's back yard,'' he said Friday, suiting up for another house call.

Herb buys all his beekeeping gear from the L.A. Honey Co., where salesman Chris Klasinski was having another slow day Friday because things have been pretty stagnant the last couple of decades in the beekeeping market.

``It sure isn't like the '70s when more people were into natural stuff, like making their own honey,'' Chris said. ``We're getting less and less people into bees these days.''

What most people who call Eppick in a panic want is to get out of bees, not into them.

``This time of year and in the spring, we get at least one or two calls a day from people with swarms in their back yards,'' she said.

``The new queens are being born, and you can only have one queen in a hive, so the new queens and her followers are leaving to set up their own nests,'' she said.

Enter Herb Harder, who got interested in bees about 25 years ago when he was sitting on his front porch one hot, summer day and felt something dripping down from the eaves.

``It turned out to be honey,'' he said. ``The bees had gotten into the eaves. I called up a beekeeper in the Yellow Pages and he told me I had three options.

``I could do nothing and hope they'd go away. I could tear the eaves open and get them out, or I could fumigate and kill them.

``Well, I didn't like the last two options much, so I just left them alone, and they finally left. The next spring I had a swarm of them in one of my bushes, and I called him back.

``He set up a hive for me, and as I watched him do it, I thought, heck, I could do that,'' Herb said. So, he did.

``The swarming bees are pretty docile right now because they're gorged with honey,'' he said. ``When I get stung, which is rare, it's usually because I've been careless.

``I gently put the bees in my (gloved) hand, and put them in a hive you can buy at the L.A. Honey Co. or make yourself from a kit.

``I only destroy the bees if they're the aggressive, Africanized bees, but most of the time they're not. Why kill something when you don't have to? After I put the bees in a hive, I bring them home and harvest the honey.''

Then he drives them all out to Acton, where anything goes. Like Sherry said, fascinating stuff to watch - from behind a screen door.

CAPTION(S):

2 photos

Photo:

(1) Herb Harder works with some of the bees he keeps at his Glendale Home. Harder's interest in bees began about 25 years ago when he was sitting on his front porch one hot, summer day and felt honey dripping down from the eaves.

(2) Herb Harder shows some of the equipment he uses - a mask and a smoker - to work with bees, something he's been doing for about 25 years now.

Hans Gutknecht/Staff Photographer