Insect pollinator nutritional & behavioral ecology
As described in my last post (Battling Bees), my current research project involves mass-marking bees from 8 separate observation hives so I can determine mineral preferences of each individual hive, and track how those preferences might correlate with hive health. To mark the bees, my summer interns (four industrious interns over two separate summers) and […]
To investigate honey bee mineral preferences, I put out artificial feeders (the upside-down tubes in the video) with different mineral solutions to create a “tasting table” for the honey bees. Once trained to feed from the tasting table (see last week’s How to Train Your Honey Bees), the bees forage at the table, and drink […]
Honey bees can be trained to do a lot of things. Recently, they have been trained to detect bombs, diabetes, and maybe even cancer. I simply train my honey bees to drink from artificial feeders at a certain location. Easier said than done (in the summertime anyway). Whether honey bees are being trained to detect […]
Why do honey bees like dirty water? It is a common question—in fact, this is not the first blog post concerning honey bees and dirty water (see Mud Songs and Honey Bee Suite)—and yet, there is not a definitive answer. I first started keeping bees when I joined the Starks Lab in the summer of […]
Providence Pollinator Lab 