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POLK CITY, Iowa -- The warmer weather over the weekend has many of us thinking about spring. For a lot of us, that means getting our gardens ready.

We all know the normal things you need for that, some seeds, soil and maybe a few tools but there is one important thing that is a little tougher to find. Cherry Glen Farms is one of a handful of places in the metro offering beekeeping classes to educate people on the role pollination plays in our gardens.

“We’ve been losing about half of our colonies of bees each year,” said Dr. Ray Meylor, Cherry Glen Learning Farm.

Polk County Conservation estimates there has been a decline of around 75 percent of total bee population in Iowa over a 10 year stretch. Native pollinators are now being rented to farms to help.

There are a variety of factors that have led to the decline of the bee population in Iowa. Those include mites attacking the hives and poor food supply, but the biggest is the application of pesticides.

"Another thing you can do to help out bees is not is to not apply pesticides in your lawn and flower gardens and flower beds,” said Heidi Anderson, naturalist with Polk County Conservation. “Those are directly harmful to bees and other insects as well."

Those pollinators help with flower reproduction. Without flower reproduction your plants won't grow as well and fruits can taste drastically worse.

"Without them we wouldn't have apples, blueberries, strawberries, pumpkins, tomatoes, and a variety of different things,” said Anderson.

Meylor says that this is a pivotal time for education on beekeeping if you want to avoid those mid-season disasters.

Cherry Glen offers a class every Saturday from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. on beekeeping.

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