A SWARM of bees rushed the campus of IBA University in Jalan Mayor Ruslan, Palembang—but not for lectures, of course. They were heading for a wall at IBA’s School of Technology. There, the insects sought convenient shade by building colonies. “They are black,” said Holda Herman, Chairman of the South Sumatra Apiarian Association, concurrently lecturer at the university.

The color points to something obvious: the bees are not of urban ori