Here on the steep banks of the city’s hilltop reservoir, under the fierce eye of an early summer sun, Christina Fabris and her 30,000 babies are all as busy as can be.

She flits from hive to hive in her netted hat and billowy bee suit, puffing wisps of cool pine-straw smoke into the crowded wooden boxes, then easing each honeycomb out for close appraisal. Is this hive a happy place? Are its workers productive? Or have they grown discontent with their queen, and chosen a better leader?

The complexities of honeybee civilization amaze Fabris, AS97, who in her nearly nonexistent spare time runs Iris and Callisto’s Apiary in Wilmington with her husband Joe Csoltko, EOE98. She’s inspired by the parallels between honeybees’ lives and our own perilous existence: Two societies, both reliant on cooperation and coordination. Two species, working in harmony, each getting (and giving) in turn.

To this general contractor and mother of two, these ten wooden hives serve as apt metaphors for the mindset we need to embrace: Respect your world. Know your food. And realize all that we stand to lose.

“We look for a balance of what we want, and what they want,” says Fabris, who learned beekeeping from an uncle during childhood summers in Northern Italy. Her bees’ give their bounty for her to sell—as seasonal honeys with names like Bon Vivant Bourdain and Bite-a-Venus. In return, they receive her care, then buzz away each day to pollinate our crops and help feed us all again.

“These bees give me the perfect way to have a dialog with people about the environment, about pesticides, about pollution,” she says.

Iris and Callisto’s Apiary honey is available at Frank’s Wine in Wilmington. Connect with them through Instagram, @irisandcallistos.