The BeeGroup at VT

04/07/2026

Herbicides, which are used to treat weeds, also impact the brains and behavior of foraging honey bees. VT did a cool write-up on a study that was published in 2025 from Dr. Laura McHenry out of the lab of Dr. Margaret Jane Couvillon.

03/23/2026

VSBA October Mtg News!

🐝 Fresh news from Florida!

We’re excited to officially confirm that Dr. Jamie Ellis will be joining us as our Keynote Speaker for the VSBA Fall Conference – October 17–18, 2026.

And that’s not all…

We’ll also be welcoming:
✨ Dr. Maggie Couvillon
✨ Kaylee Richardson
✨ Dr. Hollee Freeman

This is shaping up to be an incredible weekend of education, collaboration, and real-world beekeeping knowledge from some of the best in the field.

And we’re not done yet—more speakers will be announced soon.

Stay tuned for registration details 👀

03/10/2026

Our own Dr. James Wilson is being honored for his commitment to teaching, mentoring, and pedagogy. Woot!

Congratulations to James Wilson on being awarded the Virginia Tech College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Certificate of Teaching Excellence for 2026! 🎊

Dr. Wilson is a Collegiate Assistant Professor of Apiculture in our department, and he teaches several classes including our popular Bees and Beekeeping class. 🐝

03/09/2026

Sometimes it's really fun to write about someone else's work.

Check out "A New Toy for Serious Science Allows for Individual Honey Bee Forager Tracking"!

02/06/2026

Come join us on February 22nd, 2026 for a relaunching of our webinar series in collaboration with Virginia State Beekeepers Association (VSBA)!

12/22/2025

Do you like getting data from your hives? Join us and our ongoing effort the US Capped Brood Monitoring Program!

Citizen science request! We are expanding our US Capped Brood Monitoring Program (https://aub.ie/winterbrood) to beekeepers for three time periods this winter: Dec 19-21, Jan 2-4, and Jan 16-18.

Each beekeeper inspection should take 2-3 minutes per colony, with minimal disturbance; we are looking for a Yes or No for presence of Capped Brood.

Please help us get to our target of 10 beekeeper participants per state!

For a demonstration video and to submit your information, go to: https://aub.ie/broodcsi

UF IFAS Honey Bee Research and Extension Laboratory UGA Honey Bee Lab MSU Extension Apiculture Program Texas A&M University Apiculture UT Department of Entomology and Plant Pathology Central State University Bee Research Lab Cornell Dyce Lab for Honey Bee Studies University of MN Bee Lab University of MN Bee Squad Oregon State Honey Bee Lab WSU Bee Program

09/22/2025

Former PhD student Dr. Laura McHenry, her advisor Dr. Maggie Couvillon, and other members of the bee group have published a scientific study using social network analysis to characterize the structure and function of the waggle dance communication network. These data offer the first empirical and biologically-informed descriptive statistics for honey bee waggle dance networks and may be informative in the parameterization of bio-inspired computing models.

This paper is part of a special issue of Women in Bee Science in Frontiers. Special thanks to Dr. Susan Fahrbach for being a super editor.

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/bee-science/articles/10.3389/frbee.2025.1654032/full

08/17/2025

Weekend reading: This , revisit last year’s special collection all about honey bees in the Journal of Insect Science.

Published in partnership with the American Association of Professional Apiculturists and the Canadian Association of Professional Apiculturists, these articles share the latest research on honey bee health, sociobiology, and management.

🐝 https://academic.oup.com/jinsectscience/pages/micro-macro-aspects-of-honey-bee-health

06/10/2025

Beautiful images of underground nests, which is how most bees live.

05/23/2025

We celebrated our 4th annual VT Bee Day on April 24 by making two pollinator gardens at the visitors center.

05/16/2025

Waggle dancing honey bees are awe-inspiring, but they are also important tools for biology. What happens when humans develop an area that was formerly indicated by dancing bees as being a foraging hotspot?

Check out our new paper that quantifies the impact of land use change on foraging honey bees.

This work was done by former student Dr. Rob Ostrom and led by his advisor Dr. Roger Schürch in Virginia Tech Department of Entomology.

https://journals.biologists.com/bio/article/doi/10.1242/bio.061807/367731