Bees swarm in Fort Lauderdale

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla., July 23 (UPI) -- A swarm of bees in a busy section of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., has made local residents and business owners nervous.

One expert says they have nothing to fear, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported.

"Leave them alone and give them a wide berth," Michael Cantor of the South Florida Bee Nursery advised.

After a local resident sent an e-mail to the city Thursday, with pictures of swarming bees, the Fort Lauderdale forester joined firefighters and police officers on a bee hunt. They found a hive in the space between outside and inside walls in a chiropractor's office.

The property owner must decide whether to move the hive -- which would involve knocking through a wall -- or to exterminate the bees.

Experts say bees swarm when a hive gets so big one part breaks away to seek a new home. With European honey bees, that happens once or twice a year, but Africanized bees, popularly known as killer bees, swarm more frequently.

While most of the wild bees in South Florida are now Africanized, experts say the Fort Lauderdale swarm is behaving more like a European one.