At the University of Georgia’s veterinary teaching hospital, aspiring animal doctors learn to minister to a menagerie: dogs with dermatitis, horses with colic and now, hundreds of thousands of honeybees.

Students examined more than a dozen hives, holding the wax combs up to the sun and searching for signs of disease: the stunted wings, discolored larvae or minuscule mites that can spell serious trouble for the nation’s bees and, by extension, its food supply.

The honeybee medicine program at the University of Georgia is part of a nascent but growing effort to enlist veterinarians in the fight, as its colonies are plagued by parasites and pathogens and weakened by climate change, pesticides and malnutrition.