UPMC Memorial established beehives along its wellness trail as part of an initiative to create a healthy, sustainable campus. The sunny, sheltered location provides a suitable home for honeybees, whose colonies are intended to support pollination of flowers and other plants in the surrounding area as garden spaces are developed with sunflowers, fruit and nut trees, and native plant gardens. Beekeeping there also includes plans to harvest raw honey. Each hive begins as one box and can expand to five levels, growing from about 12,000 bees to as many as 60,000 over the course of a year, with numbers dropping during the cold season and rebounding in spring. When a colony becomes too large, the old queen leaves with part of it in a swarm to find a new home, and a new queen takes over the hive.