A natural beehive found on campus in 2007 was relocated and is still part of the UH area's ecosystem.
Photo by Jenna Frenzel/The Daily Cougar
A beehive relocated from the walls of a campus building almost seven years ago has been hard at work maintaining plant life on and near the University ever since, even in the face of declining honeybee populations across the country.
In November 2007, there was a rise in students complaining of bees in the Cullen College of Engineering. Once some of them claimed to have found honey on the walls, an inspection confirmed that there was a fully functioning hive of 100,000 bees in a wall of the building.
In order to allow classes to continue normally while still maintaining the hive, the University hired the services of beekeeper Mike Knuckey to safely remove the hive, maintain it until it was again functioning and then relocate it to a forested area on campus. Knuckey did just that, carefully cutting the honeycomb free, relocating it to an artificial hive box and feeding the colony sugar water until it was producing honey of its own again.
"The bee box has since been relocated back to campus," Knuckey said. "You can find it near the south end in a wooded area just off of Cullen Boulevard."