April 5, 2019
Spring is a busy time of the year for beekeepers as it marks the arrival of bee packages. Package bees have become a staple for beekeepers in North America as more people take up beekeeping as a hobby and overwinter colony losses have increased.
April 3, 2019
A new online tool and community, called Beescape, enables beekeepers, or anyone interested in bees, to understand the specific stressors to which the bees in their managed hives, home gardens or farms are exposed, according to researchers at Penn State.
April 2, 2019
Honeybees play essential roles in pollinating plants that humans and animals rely on for food. Declines in bee populations - including 20 percent of honeybee colonies per year in Indiana - threaten our food supply. Insecticide exposure, loss of flowering plants, and fewer nesting habitats, disease and parasites are all factors.
April 1, 2019
Beescape.org provides a tool for beekeepers, gardeners, growers and land managers to assess the quality of their landscapes for supporting managed honey bees and wild bees. It was developed through a partnership led by Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences, Center for Pollinator Research and Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences.
February 28, 2019
The “Authentic Plant Pollinator Landscape Research for Educators” workshop, co-hosted by Penn State's colleges of Education and Agricultural Sciences, is slated for June 24-28 at the University Park campus.
February 27, 2019
With insect species declining and agriculturally-important pollinators at risk, it’s important to know what species are present in an area to help protect them. PhD student Shelby Kilpatrick is trying to find out what bees are present in Pennsylvania, and is creating a list that could help with future conservation efforts.
February 25, 2019
This is the 1st of eight short news articles written by students, during the professional development class, about each other's research.
February 21, 2019
Let's catch up this week on some gardening news and interesting tidbits ... Bird and pollinator gardens coming to Penn State
February 7, 2019
The abilities of various bee species to disperse influences the pattern of their population's genetic structure, which, in turn, can constrain how they respond to environmental change, as reported by an international team of researchers.
January 16, 2019
When the temperature drops and the days get shorter, honey bees don’t hibernate—they huddle. Meanwhile, worker bees produced in the fall are plump and have longer lifespans than their spring counterparts. These winterized workers form a “thermoregulatory cluster” around their queen. Powered by honey stores, they shiver their muscles to produce heat, keeping temperatures at the center of the cluster around a comfortable 21 degrees Celsius (C). Still, winter is a stressful time for honey bee (Apis mellifera) colonies. In the United States around 30 percent of colonies don’t survive until spring.
January 16, 2019
For university scientists and student volunteers, the reality of bee deaths during winter is harsh. Just last year, the Beekeepers Club lost all of its bees to the cold weather, thus slowing its productions and making this year one of rebuilding.
January 8, 2019
A unique teacher professional development experience for middle and high school teachers. June 24th - 28th, 2019
December 5, 2018
Dicamba herbicide drift onto plants growing adjacent to farm fields causes significant delays in flowering, as well as reduced flowering, of those plants, and results in decreased visitation by honey bees, according to researchers at Penn State and the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture.
December 3, 2018
Penn State has become the 55th educational institution in the nation to be certified as an affiliate of the Bee Campus USA program, designed to marshal the strength of educational campuses for the benefit of pollinators.
October 26, 2018
Penn State’s class of 2019 has chosen as its class gift legacy the Pollinators’ Garden Entry Gate at the Arboretum at Penn State.
October 15, 2018
A club in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences is creating quite a buzz around campus.
October 9, 2018
Every fall, hundreds of millions of monarch butterflies make their way from the United States and Canada to overwintering sites in Mexico. In recent years, this phenomenal migration is threatened by habitat loss in North America and at their overwintering grounds, so people across the continent have been setting up monarch way stations to help protect this species.
October 2, 2018
The Pest Management Professional Magazine (PMP) staff is pleased to announce the five newest nominees for the PMP Hall of Fame.
September 17, 2018
Since 2016 the López-Uribe lab has been leading a citizen science project that aims to map and characterize the health status of feral bees across Pennsylvania
September 13, 2018
In the age of digital technology, mobile devices are good for more than just text messaging and playing games. According to Penn State College of Education researchers, the combination of technology and the outdoors is getting children and their families outside to learn more about science and their communities.
September 12, 2018
From pesticides to land development to electromagnetic pollution, humans often harm the ability of honeybees to reproduce.
September 10, 2018
The Penn State Postdoctoral Society has announced postdoctoral researcher Glen Sterner III and Distinguished Professor of Entomology Christina Grozinger as the recipients of the 2018 Outstanding Postdoc Award and Outstanding Postdoc Mentor Award, respectively.
August 29, 2018
Penn State Altoona has been awarded a grant for year one of a four-year research project from the Tree Research and Education Endowment (TREE) Fund. The grant will support research evaluating long-term effects of electrical right-of-way vegetation management on floral and faunal communities.
August 22, 2018
Please join us in congratulating Margarita Lope-Uribe who is the recipient of the Early Career Research Award. This award recognizes a student transition or early professional who has made outstanding research contributions to the field of entomology.
August 8, 2018
Entomologist and urban bee specialist Doug Sponsler joins Billy and Tony early in the morning in a community garden spot in West Philadelphia to observe squash bees and talk about what counts as native. Squash are not strictly native to Philadelphia. They were introduced by Indians before European colonization. The bees followed the squash cultivation from its original distribution. Are they native? How much does it matter?
July 31, 2018
The benefits of creating pollinator-friendly landscapes is a focus of the Yard and Garden Area this year at Ag Progress Days, Aug. 14-16.
July 31, 2018
The Governing Board of the Entomological Society of America (ESA) has elected 10 new Fellows of the Society for 2018. Election as a Fellow of ESA acknowledges outstanding contributions to entomology in research, teaching, extension and outreach, administration, or the military.
July 30, 2018
Communicating the intricate structure of pollinator communities can be a difficult task, but thanks to a collaboration between the School of Visual Arts and the Center for Pollinator Research at Penn State, there is a new tool that could have success both inside and outside of the classroom.
July 30, 2018
If you grow blueberries on your farm, please consider participating in this short survey.
July 13, 2018
A field of flowers in Carlisle isn't being grown for its beauty. It's a pollinator garden and is now being used for bigger research.
