Beeswaxing poetic about their hobby hives

Kirk Anderson bought his first honeybees from a Montgomery Ward catalog in 1970.

The 3-pound cage came in the mail, and as he opened it and fed the bees sugar water, his lifelong passion with Apis mellifera began.

Nearly 40 years later, Anderson, 61, calls himself an urban beekeeper, and he cares passionately enough about bees that he does house-call rescues throughout Los Angeles County.

Anderson gets 20 calls a week. He fishes the insects out of Jacuzzis, removes them from chimneys and shakes them from trees.

His efforts come amid a growing interest in beekeeping in urban areas, as word of the mysterious collapse of bee colonies has spread.

Honeybee colonies pollinate a third of the nation's food supply and are crucial to California's agriculture industry. Hives from around the country are brought in each year to pollinate almond trees and other crops. Central Valley farmers have struggled in the last three years as the cost of renting hives rises and the number of bees nationwide dwindles.

On a hot afternoon in a dusty hillside yard in Silver Lake, Anderson dons a netted hood and white jumpsuit, pulls on big yellow gloves and then places a box next to a dried-out pear tree. He shakes the trunk, and, like a maestro conducting a choir, uses a wooden stick to lead the bees into their new abode.

"They want to have a home. That's their purpose. I'm just providing it for them," Anderson said.

Once the bees are captured, Anderson "re-purposes" them, selling them to beekeeping club members who pay $75 for a box of the insects and some instruction.

The Backwards Beekeepers formed their club last year, taking their name from writer-beekeeper Charles Martin Simon's philosophy of "beekeeping backwards" -- working with nature and not thinking that keeping is just about money and honey.

Anderson, who likes to jest that "backwards is the new forward," waxes rhapsodic about the revival of a lost art. "We're resurrecting beekeeping as a profession," he said. "You don't see people talking to kids at a job fair about beekeeping, do you?"

A house painter by trade, Anderson hopes to be able to make enough money from beekeeping to call it his full-time work.

Scientists nationwide are struggling with the mystery of "colony collapse disorder" (CCD); for Anderson, the answers are simple.