Honeybees aren't much for reading tourist brochures but, were there any for six-legged buzzers, they might go something like this:

"Come to Greater Pittsburgh For the Abandoned Buildings -- Stay For the Weedy Lots."

I was down in Braddock on Friday morning, a perfect day to remove 10,000 to 20,000 bees from an abandoned building (not that I saw anyone hand-counting). The bees had been longtime residents of a once-handsome, now haphazardly boarded and crumbling century-old yellow-brick building at the corner of Eighth and Talbot.

Robert Steffes and Jennifer Wood, who have kept bees in their backyard in Aliquippa for more than four years, were among the bipeds who swarmed the site. With the help of an $8,000 grant from The Sprout Fund, the Burgh Bees club was removing this colony and is setting up demonstration apiaries in Braddock, Mount Washington and Hazelwood and as many other places for which they can find some bees.

As was noted in Saturday's Post-Gazette, the operation went smoothly, far more smoothly than I'd have thought a humongous bee-colony breakup could go.

As it unfolded, the bee people gave me a quick lesson on our post-industrial niche in the modern bee universe.

Mr. Steffes pointed across the street at some Japanese knotweed spreading through a vacant lot. Gardeners hate it but bees love it. The weed's essence results in a dark red honey sometimes called "bamboo red."

Mike Allen of Moon took a taste from the honey dripping from the comb and pronounced, "Oh, my God, that's good!"

Managed colonies have a problem with mites, Mr. Steffes said, but these feral bees are strong. They're drawn to places humans have abandoned. Prosperous suburban areas just aren't as healthy for bees because there the insects confront oceans of managed lawns laced with insecticides and herbicides.

The scene in Braddock spoke to a mini-resurgence in beekeeping, part of the movement for more local agriculture. There are an estimated 2,300 beekeepers in Pennsylvania, up by more than 10 percent since a year ago, and more backyard hives arise each year.

Jim Fitzroy, 67, who has been keeping bees in Penn Hills for roughly a quarter-century, did about seven or eight bee extractions last year and said he wasn't used to crowds.

"It looks like an Amish barn raising," he said. "Usually I have maybe one other person."

Others wore protective gear, white helmets with veils. (I did.) Mr. Fitzroy wore a white T-shirt and red suspenders and he shook off the few bees as another man might drops of water. He brought a veil but never put it on. These bees were confused by the smoke the extractors wafted into the hive, and never mind the sting on one of his fingers.

"I squeezed him," he shrugged. The rest wouldn't bother him because "I read their mood."

"It's like your wife. You throw your hat in the door and if it doesn't come back out you can go in."

These bees were brought back to the SteffesWood Apiary in Aliquippa. Mr. Steffes said three queens, purchased from Hawaii, were introduced to form three mini-colonies. In another three weeks, all the foragers from the original colony will have died off and it will be safe to bring bees back to Braddock. A new apiary should open behind the former convent at St. Michael's this summer. By then, no surviving bees will know the way back to the old haunt at Eighth and Braddock.

If you like the taste of apples, squash or cucumbers, you should like bees. The value of their pollination to Pennsylvania agriculture is estimated in the tens of millions of dollars. "Every third bite of food you eat was probably pollinated by a honeybee," Mr. Fitzroy said.

Yet for all bees' importance, this operation seemed remarkably low-tech. The honeycombs were taken down from the walls of the old building, cut into large pieces with a kitchen knife, and then put into small wooden frames and held in place with rubber bands.

Put enough of 'em together and they look like a million bucks. The way the economy has been tanking, there are some out there who say we'll all soon be back to the days of subsistence farming, so it's good to hear a few more local gardens should be getting their buzz on soon.

For more information, see www.burghbees.com.