Bzzzzzzzz

Honeybees started arriving at Yale’s West Campus in April. “They’re freshmen,” says Eli Powell ’01, ’08PhD, a research associate in the lab run by ecology and evolutionary biology professor Nancy Moran.

Julie Brown

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Like many of the critters Moran studies, bees house symbiotic bacteria in their guts that help them survive. Her lab does research on the bees and their bacterial hitchhikers to better understand these relationships. The four resident hives get loving care from the lab’s staff, including Kim Hammond, who is shown here checking on one colony’s queen. Periodically, bees are removed from the hive for study; but mostly they just buzz around, collecting pollen. The colonies have given back. In late July, Hammond harvested more than 15 pounds of honey.

So far, the 100,000-plus bees have been good neighbors. Powell says no one outside the lab has been stung. “I don’t think, unless you knew hives were there, that you’d notice anything was going on,” he says. “The bees are pretty low impact.”