Along a pine-lined road in Prince George’s County, the entrance to the Eastern Ecological Science Center’s Bee Lab is marked by a sign with a hovering black and yellow bee, big as a baseball.

Wildlife biologist Sam Droege built the Bee Lab from the ground up over the past quarter-century. Here, some pollinate the native plant garden, and hundreds of thousands more are pinned and ready for study.

The collection holds specimens from across the country, a trove that has helped hundreds of researchers better understand the fragile, essential insects that keep food growing. The lab’s online database includes nearly 800,000 bees, each one a tiny clue in the fight to keep them alive.

The lab is funded by the U.S. Geological Survey. Droege is a federal employee.

About two weeks ago, Droege sent a beacon across social media and email, with an unusual request: “Come help the Bee Lab put bees to bed.”

The Trump administration’s executive orders and moves by the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, have gutted federal agencies at breakneck speed — nuclear engineers, park rangers and researchers alike.

The Bee Lab, Droege warned the public, could be next. Its parent agency has already faced deep staffing and resource cuts under DOGE’s plan.

Droege declined to be interviewed, saying he was not authorized to speak for the federal agency.

Bees in the lab’s collection have been carefully collected, frozen, pinned and prepped for study. Once they are fully identified by species and genus, they’re sealed up for study.

A sudden shuttering would put at risk nearly 300,000 bees in the collection that hadn’t yet been properly preserved. Their little bodies left to rot in an empty lab building. Gnawed by mice, scattered by insects. Decades of research, gone.

But if there were any “new taxonomists in training” willing to help, Droege wrote, there was still a way to save them. A way to tuck the lab in for days, weeks — even months. Long enough to keep the collection intact.

His request buzzed across the Internet — he maintains one of the federal government’s biggest Instagram accounts — flying between biologists and bee lovers alike.

And suddenly, Droege had a hive. Dozens of volunteers, ready to work.

The task, in theory, was simple: Transfer the bees from pizza-style boxes into black-and-brown, glass-topped scientific cases. Seal them tight. Safe from ruin.

Dubbed “the working collection,” these pizza boxes meant the bees were awaiting proper preservation. Some still needed to be identified.

Sadie Lachman had never driven on the highway before. But Saturday afternoon, the 18-year-old high school senior climbed behind the wheel, left his home in D.C., and made the drive to Beltsville to spend the day elbow-deep in dead bees.

Some were the size of a blueberry. Most, no bigger than a grain of rice. There were the familiar ones, yellow and black. But just as many shimmered green, their colors shifting in the light.

This was Lachman‘s second weekend volunteering, moving the pinned insects into labeled boxes.

“All seniors at my school have to do a senior project,” Lachman said, grinning. “I’m considering doing mine here. If it’s still open, of course.”

He found his way to the Bee Lab through his dad, Gideon Lachman, 53. A former biologist, Gideon Lachman and Droege researched frogs together years ago. Life pulled them in different directions. Then, one morning in 2012, Gideon Lachman was riding an Amtrak through Cumberland when he caught a glimpse of someone out the window.

“Are you in Cumberland this morning?” Gideon Lachman texted Droege. “I swear I saw your golden hair, walking along the railroad tracks with a net in hand around 9 a.m.”

Droege texted back: “Weird. I was thinking that someone on the Amtrak train might recognize me.”

He was out collecting bees.

They reconnected, staying in touch on Facebook. Then two weeks ago, Gideon Lachman saw Droege’s post about preserving the bee collection. And now, more than a decade after their chance Cumberland reconnection, here he was with his son, moving mummified bees, one by one, into their new homes.

Like the Lachmans, most of the dozen or so volunteers interviewed by The Banner weren’t just there out of anger over federal cuts or love for bees. Mostly, they were there for Droege.

“It’s incredible, the impact that Sam and that lab has — and had — on so many careers. It’s hard to overstate that," said University of Maryland entomology professor Anahi Espindola.

She first met Droege in 2018, not long after she arrived at the university to research pollinators.

“Everybody told me: ‘You need to meet Sam,’” she said. Soon, she was consulting him on taxonomy, asking him to help identify specimens and bringing students to his lab to study.

When Droege’s email landed in her inbox a few weeks ago, she didn’t hesitate. She forwarded it across the university and scientific community. At least a dozen volunteers from UMD alone signed up to help.

“I was like, ‘We can’t not help him. This is the minimum we can do,” Espindola said.

For now, the Bee Lab stays open. But any day Droege and his team could be told they’re done for good.

By 6 p.m. Saturday, the last volunteers packed up. Some carried out pizza boxes with lab leftovers — a surplus of bees no longer needed in the center’s overflowing inventory.

Photos from Facebook showed the lab transformed: rows of neatly stacked boxes, each cradling dozens of tiny bodies.

The bees had been put to bed. All that was left to do was wait.