Wolfpack’s Waggle Newsletter
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What have we been up to? |
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| While we did not have an early start to the spring this year, we have had an early end. It’s only early June, but the nectar flow has already slowed to a trickle, and Kim is already in the process of taking off supers and spinning out this year’s honey. We don’t have a lot of spare time to do so, however, as our entire team is super busy on any number of projects right now. Jen and Catherine are traveling the state sampling colonies for our collaborative project with Clemson University on the effects of flooding in WNC on potential disease outbreaks. Brad and Molly are conducting a project on how brood pheromones might assist in colony growth and establishment, including a new state-of-the-art imaging system to automatically detect brood using UV light. Kim is helping Parker with a study to see if beekeeper-applied treatments (antibiotic and miticide) might affect the egg-laying patterns of queens. Ali has been working hard in Vancouver on our collaborative studies with UC Riverside on the effects of temperature on drone viability. Finally, Adam has been digging deep into some massive datasets that we have on drone flights to analyze patterns in their mating behavior. | |
Lab spotlight |
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What would we do without Kim Guillemette?! She is our Apiculture Technician, meaning that she is responsible for running our entire field operation. Anything doing with live bees, she’s the boss. It’s a challenging job to run numerous apiaries of honey bee colonies, especially when our research projects require that we do everything opposite to beekeeping best management practices! But our overwintering losses were extremely low (12%) in a year when beekeepers are reporting 60-70% mortality, and we’ve come through the winter with extremely healthy bees, all thanks to Kim. She’s been a wonderful addition to our team and look forward to great things to come! |
What you should be doing in your apiary this month (June 2025) |
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Swarm season is in full swing but should be slowing down shortly. Many colonies have already swarmed, or ideally they were split by the beekeeper….. |
New publications and grant awards |
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Ali has done it again! Here’s one of her newest publications that shows how cedar beehives neither help nor harm honey bee colony growth or mite loads. McAfee, A., D. R. Tarpy, and L. J. Foster. (2025). Western red cedar (Thuja plicata) beehives have no impact on honey bee (Apis mellifera) overwintering colony survival or detoxification enzyme expression. PLoS ONE, 20: e0318764. [LINK] |
Welcome aboard! |
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We are really fortunate to have Molly Carlson recently join the team as our Genetics Technician and prospective MS student. Molly is an NC State alumna, but she has been working in several USDA-ARS honey bee research labs so she comes back with a wealth of knowledge and experience in apiculture research. She is currently helping revive our molecular facilities in the Queen & Disease Clinic but is planning on starting a graduate program in ecology and evolution. |
Teacher’s corner |
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Our large course in the fall semester, AEC 203 “An Introduction to the Honey Bee and Beekeeping,” is already fully enrolled at 165. Aimed at non-science majors, the course is designed to fulfill the General Education Requirement (GER) for most University majors. As such, we not only cover the interesting aspects of honey bee biology and beekeeping, we also delve into honey bees in art and literature, mythology and religion, even politics and warfare! |
