40,000 honey bees, beehive and bee hotels make campus an urban bee haven

Northeastern is a university with a lot of “buzz.” With more than 96,000 undergraduate applications, and new campuses opening across North America, the place is a beehive of activity. And this summer, the Boston campus in particular is buzzing—and not because of humans.

The Northeastern University Arboretum recently installed a beehive and a set of bee hotels to help further cement the university as an urban habitat fit for all kinds of plants and wildlife. The hive, located on Richardson Plaza, is home to between 30,000 and 40,000 honey bees, courtesy of Avéole, an urban beekeeping company.

Meanwhile the custom bee hotels, which sit on a green roof between the Mugar Life Sciences Building and Curry Student Center, will provide shelter for native solitary bees to lay their eggs.

“Our whole ethos is to make this an urban habitat supporting birds and other wildlife, and bees and other pollinators are a very important insect and species type in general in natural ecosystems,” says Jonathan Bacdayan, a senior environmental studies major and one of two co-ops who worked on the project. “We’re trying to be intentional and go out of our way to make this a space that’s welcoming pollinators into the landscape.”

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Photo by Alyssa Stone/ Northeastern University