Even though hives are banned from the city due to the risk the insects' stings can pose to humans, universities enjoy an exemption for research purposes.
At the University of Rosario, biologist Andre Riveros very carefully feeds a bee some sugar water, watching attentively as it stretches its straw-like tongue, or proboscis, towards the sweet liquid.
The university boasts a rooftop apiary in a bamboo structure some six meters (nearly 20 feet) high, surrounded by trees and flowers.
Here, Riveros and his team study a colony of bees in the hopes of developing a food supplement that will offer the critical crop pollinators protection from insecticides
"Pesticides end up affecting some (neurological) regions that, for example, affect learning and memory and (the bees) end up with damage very similar to Alzheimer's," Riveros told AFP.
"We are trying to find a solution for the problem of bee disappearances," he added. "We seek to shield the bees, in essence."
The team's work focuses on the Apis mellifera, or Western Honey Bee, one of about 20,000 known species worldwide.
Hundreds of hives have been killed off in Colombia in recent years, and investigations into the cause have pointed to fipronil, an insecticide banned in Europe and restricted in the United States and China.
Fipronil has been widely used in a profitable avocado and citrus boom in Colombia, though the Latin American country suspended its use in some crops for six months last year.
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