UNL Bee Lab

Kimmel Orchard is buzzing with activity!

The UNL Bee Lab was delighted to partner with for a bee and honey extraction tour for their summer camp. We talked about the many different bees in the world (around 20,000!) and how our food systems are dependent on managed and wild bees. We then went out into the yard to see how beekeepers manage honey bees. Next we extracted some honey, and we finished up the tour by looking at pollinators in Kimmel Orchard's pollinator habitat.

We're looking forward to more Girl Scouts camps and tours this summer. We love helping empower girls and giving them opportunities to get in touch with nature and science.

The UNL Bee Lab would like to extend a huge thank you to tattoo artist Kevin Chasek! Kevin chose to sponsor the UNL Bee Lab during Iron Brush Tattoo's Charity Day. We truly appreciate his support. Thank you Kevin for your generosity!

My, my, what do we have buzzing over here?

The bee lab was called in by Sara of Lincoln to do a bumble bee removal. These bees began forming their colony in an old finch nest, located on a wreath hanging on Sara's door. As the location was not ideal, Sara contacted the bee lab to help relocate the bees. The lab removed the bees and their nest from the wreath. We'll use the bumble bees for education and outreach for the rest of the colony's lifespan. The colony will be called Sara after Sara of Lincoln. This is a colony of Brown Belted Bumble bees or Bombus griseocollis.

Bumble bees often incorporate pieces of their surroundings in their structures. This can include dirt and grass, or in this case pieces of the wreath and the old finch nest. Bumble bee colonies will nest in cavities, such as old rodent holes in the ground, or as seen here, more "creative" locations such as a flower pot, compost pile, hay shed, or finch nest in a wreath!

If you would like to support bumble bees, consider planting flowering plants to support their nutritional needs, participating in a citizen science effort such as the Bumble Bee Atlas, or donating to organizations who support their conservation.

NACEE the Nebraska Alliance for Conservation & Environmental Education is hosting a handful of online courses this summer and fall that are centered around connecting educators with nature.

These courses will teach educators how to engage their students and themselves in topics related to the outdoors and conservation. There are 4 different classes being offered and each image provides details over the topics being covered as well as dates and registration fees.

If you have any questions our would like to register for these classes please reach out to the folks at NACEE or follow the link below to their webpage.

Email: [email protected] (Amber Schiltz)
NACEE Webpage: https://www.nacee.org/

Do you love honey ? 🍯 What about coffee from a local business? ☕ Well than we have the perfect thing for you. This Saturday (5/30) the UNL Bee Lab will be at Reactor Coffee in Lincoln from 10-11:30 with an observation hive, honey for sale and a love of talking about bees for anyone to come and see. 🐝

If you didn't know Reactor Coffee runs an ✨ experiment drink ✨ every week and this weeks features our fabulous honey. You can stop in and try the Honey Bun Latte for only 3$ till Sunday so don't delay go and get your hands on this beelicious coffee. 🐝

*Sharing this post from UNL's instagram*

Even though her research on bees can get pretty complicated, her motivation isn’t:

Paige just really, really loves bees.

“I just think bees are super cool,” Paige laughs. "I was thinking about going to med school when I first came to Nebraska, but in my heart, I knew I had this love for bees that I wanted to explore. So, during my freshman year, I got a job working at the Bee Lab.”

From there, Paige never looked back. Working under a graduate researcher in , Paige started digging into her passion and seeing ways she could grow it into a career.

“The grad student at the time was doing a wild bee project similar to the one I'm doing today. I got to go out into the field with her to study wild bee populations, and that’s where I realized that I wanted to study bees for my career.”

Paige has been collecting bee data ever since. Her undivided love isn’t (just) because they’re cute — bees are crucial to our ecosystems, from our farmlands to the gardens we enjoy right here on campus.

“The focus of my research has been looking at how different landscape designs impact wild bees. Half is looking at landscapes on our campus and seeing how different spaces support our bees, and the other has been looking at creating specific strips of land around agricultural fields that could support more biodiversity.”

All this work, she says, is to help bees do what they do best: make our environment stronger.

“By increasing and supporting their habitats, we can really help our native bee species thrive in ways that nurture our overall ecosystems in Nebraska.”

Now in her fifth year at the Bee Lab, Paige couldn’t be more grateful for having a space that nurtured her own educational ecosystem.

“Being able to work in the lab for this long is incredible. My undergraduate research really allowed me to pin down which area I wanted to focus on and help me develop those skills. Every day I'm able to discover something new that I find fascinating, so I feel really lucky.”
—
Paige Myers is a first-year entomology graduate student from Lincoln, NE. To share your story or nominate a friend, email [email protected].

Don't forget tomorrow is our Open Apiary at Kimmel Orchard in Nebraska City.

Walk ups are welcome, however registering in advance helps us plan ahead! Please register using this link: https://ssp.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_b8e2FWSmki12imW

Open apiaries are an excellent opportunity for both new/prospective beekeepers and current beekeepers. Although though they have a monthly seasonally relevant topic to beekeeping they generally follow, they are typically very customizable to attendees. New/prospective beekeepers can get introduced to the hive and beekeeping and current beekeepers can get individualized questions answered and discuss scenarios that are currently happening in their personal apiaries.

Open apiaries are free for Great Plains Master Beekeeping (GPMB) (a free organization to join) members or are $10 for non-members. Please bring exact cash or check (payable to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln) to the event. Join GPMB today at the link in our bio.

We hope to see you there!

***Update, thank you all so much we have received a lot of interest from Kansas and are no longer in need of any more beekeepers for this years APHIS program. If you would like to be considered for 1st priority next year you are welcome to fill in the interest form, but as of 6pm on 05/20 we have enough folks!***

Alrighty folks we are so close to having all of our beekeepers lined up in Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska, however we need just a few more folks in KANSAS to sign up.

If you know of any beekeepers with 10 or more hives in a single apiary that are interested in participating in the APHIS Honey Bee Health Survey please have them fill in the link below. The survey is completely free of charge and all results are kept anonymous and only shared with you after testing has been completed. This is a great way to better understand what is going on in your hive that you might not be able to see.

https://ssp.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_71b8AjtLR4FxryC

If you have any questions please feel free to reach out to Grace Carter at [email protected] and she would be happy to help answer any questions for you.