Too many MySQL connections

Hello,

We use Roller for a dozen small blogs, and are having an issue with it
opening up nearly 500 MySQL connections and choking up our database
server.  Is this expected behavior?

Is there a standard way to configure Roller to limit its db sessions to
a more reasonable number?

We are using Roller 4.0, MySQL 14.12, Java 1.6.  Roller config is fairly
standard except for using LDAP authentication and some custom modules
that don't involve the db.

- Sarah