Georgia's Bee Lab: Rich in tradition, research, and accomplishments

摘要

In our 21st century, fast-pace lifestyles, we tend to be unmindful about how it is our jobs came to be. Whose hard work, sweat and tears occurred previously in order to pave the way for our job to exist today? Until just recently, I, too, knew littleabout the history of the bee lab in which I work. So, let's take a look back over the past 38 years of the University of Georgia's Honey Bee lab. In 1969, Dr. Alfred Dietz was hired as the state's only beekeeping research and education professor at the University of Georgia. He was fresh out of the University of Maryland were he successfully coordinated the 1967 Apimondia world congress, which, by the way, was the last time it was in the United States. Dr. Dietz quickly came to realize that just becauseyou work for a large, land grant institution doesn't necessarily mean your lab will be financed. In fact he learned it was the opposite. He had very little financial support, so in order to survive in the land of research, he quickly become an expert atwriting grants to fund his projects. While learning the ropes in grant writing he began working with electron microscopy and took the first pictures of the honey bee sensory organs and the bee louse (Braula coeca). Shortly afterward he returned to his roots and began delving into honey bee nutrition. While studying at the University of Minnesota he worked for Dr. M. Haydak, the famed honey bee nutritionist. His work with pollen lead to the determination that purple brood came from pollen collected from summer titi (Cyrilla racemiflora). He also expanded his research concerning queen storage and found that using emerged queens in mating nuclei was better than using queen cells.