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The crew: Steve Finke, Larry Mutti, Katy Evans,Steve Berner and Robyn Underwood Our honey bee packages for the Project COMB are scheduled to arrive this coming April and we are getting ready for their arrival! Because used equipment can carry on microorganisms to new colonies, we are irradiating older equipment for disease prevention. Irradiation is a sterilization procedure that kills microorganisms present on the equipment using gamma radiation powered by Cobalt-60, which penetrate bacteria cells and kills them

Tracking Feral Bee Health in Pennsylvania, preliminary results 2017 What a better way to start 2018 than with an update about our exciting and ongoing citizen science project, Tracking Health of feral Bees in PA. It was a busy 2017. We sampled 19 feral colonies coupled with 11 managed colonies in six different cities throughout Pennsylvania. Once winter arrived, the field season wound down, and the bees had gone into hibernation mode, we were able

  Stakeholders at our first COMB meeting in November 2017 On November 17, 2017 stakeholders from across Pennsylvania converged to State College to discuss beekeeping protocols for our upcoming research project. The project, funded by the USDA’s Organic Agriculture Research and Extension Initiative (OREI), will be a side-by-side comparison of honey bee health using three distinct management systems: conventional, organic and chemical-free. The López-Uribe Lab invited beekeepers that use these different management systems to participate

What would Halloween be without pumpkins; where would pumpkins be without bees? Non-existent! [ Pumpkin Flower with a visiting bumble bee Pumpkins and Halloween go hand in hand. Jack O’Lantern carving is one of the most popular fall activities and pumpkin pies are a definite favorite for many at the Thanksgiving dinner table. Pumpkins were first cultivated in northern Mexico. However, they are now grown on every continent except Antarctica. Pumpkins are part of the crop genus Cucurbita

On a warm sunny day in late summer, one would expect to find many insects and other bugs in central Pennsylvania. The monarchs are beginning to migrate southward, the caterpillars are getting fat on the vines and trees, wasps and bees are visiting flowers, dragonflies are flying and perching around streams and ponds, crickets and katydids chirp from dusk to dawn, and spiders are building intricate webs. And, of course, thousands of people flock to