According to beekeepers, spring is reproductive swarm season for honeybees. It's a time when honeybees are looking to find a new home while keeping their colony together sometimes in a ball shape in trees or on the grass.

One Palos Verdes Peninsula beekeeper said if you see a swarm, call a professional to help take the bees to a safer environment.

Steven Kan has been a beekeeper for the last six years. He lives in the nature-filled hills of Palos Verdes Peninsula, where his lush green backyard also serves as a home for his honeybee colonies.

“I think we as beekeepers understand and control about 90 percent of what they do and the last 10 percent just drives us crazy,” he said.

Before checking in on his bees every week, he dispenses smoke inside the boxes and on the frames where his honeybee colony lives.

Doing this helps keep the bees calm. Recently, he collected a wild swarm of about 10,000 honeybees.

Kan said the bees were looking for a new home to lay their larvae and are relatively harmless unless they are threatened.

“Bees in a swarm are typically not defensive or aggressive. They are not going to attack you. They are homeless bees looking for a new home and they are sending out scouts one or two miles away looking for a new place to inhabit,” Kan said.

In California, millions of honeybees have been dying off for a number of reasons from pesticides and other environmental factors.

Even some of Kan’s colonies were getting sick. Kan said he’s not completely sure why his bees were getting sick. That’s why he added a powdery antibiotic on the frames to help them make it through.

“Bees are having their challenges. We hear lots about colony collapse disorder and abuse from pesticides and all these other insults that we’re putting on the environment and it’s nice to create a little safe haven for them,” Kan said.

That’s why he’s asking people not to disturb any swarms they come across or any bees in general.

Kan said there are plenty of beekeepers like him that would love to take the bees away from where they are unwanted and keep the bees safe, like his backyard.

“[That’s] one of the reasons I chose this area to live in. It’s close to nature. It’s got lots of trees and wildlife and my neighbors have donkeys and llamas,” Kan said.

He on the other hand, keeps bees and plans to build new homes for any swarms residents come across. It’s his way of keeping people from getting unnecessarily stung and providing a home for a colony of bees just looking for a new home.

Kan said if anyone comes across any bees it’s important not to use any bug spray or to threaten the bees in anyway, to prevent being stung.

The best way to remove the bees is to call a beekeeper who can naturally draw the bees to an enclosed wood box that allows the bees to safely build a colony under the beekeeper’s supervision.

To find a beekeeper in the Los Angeles area, visit the Los Angeles County Beekeepers website.