What's the Buzz?

The fall semester has officially begun and we're busy as bees in the department. What's bugging me, though, is that with this semester's new swarm (Just kidding, I love you guys!!) I haven't had the time to sit down and write some posts. Well, I heard about something from one of my colleagues that is just the bees knees and figured, "Sweet! I've got to put this in."

Our own James Frazier, an entomologist here at PSU, is in the article that's all about the "Plight of the Bees" in the face of recent Colony Collapse Disorder. And I know that I'm on here making puns, but it's a pretty big deal. When our fuzzy friends vanish, so does our pollination...which means adios agriculture.

Being an agricultural school at heart, PSU obviously got on the apiary trail. One of those amazing trailblazers was Jonathan W. White, Jr., who had a 60-year career with honey and bees. And we have his papers, which means a sweet deal for you. I have to admit, I'm not the biggest fan of bugs, but when you get down to it bees are fascinating. They talk through dance, only produce 1/12th a teaspoon of honey in their entire lives, and are crucial for many crops across the world. According to one of our former employees, they even have kind of their own personalities hive-wise. We really miss her bee stories, but hope she was able to get new hives at new location down south!

If bees are your thing, come on in! We have more resources from the Department of Entomology, and you might even find in the course of your research that there's more to bees than just the buzz.