Student receives Fulbright to study honey bee health, behavior in Kenya

University PARK, Pa. — In East Africa, beekeepers set up empty hives hoping that migrating swarms of honey bees will acquire up residence and deliver them with honey.

However, it is difficult for beekeepers to predict when migrating swarms will arrive and go away and when to harvest honey. Darcy Grey, a graduate student in Penn State’s intercollege graduate degree software in ecology, has gained a Fulbright Analyze/Exploration Award to support beekeepers by examining how habitat and temperature patterns drive bee migration and honey output in Kenya.

The Fulbright U.S. University student Program is the major U.S. trade program supplying college students and younger gurus chances to undertake worldwide graduate examine, highly developed study, college educating, and key and secondary college educating around the world. Recipients are preferred based on educational and qualified accomplishment, their history of support, and management opportunity.

“The Fulbright award is enabling me to check out a topic space that or else may possibly have been tough to safe funding for,” reported Grey, who arrived in Kenya in January for a six-thirty day period keep. “I am grateful for the recognition of my analysis to support international analysis on pollinators.”

Grey, of Extended Island, New York, is a college student in the School of Agricultural Sciences‘ International Agriculture and Enhancement (INTAD) dual-title diploma application, a exclusive system of analyze that supplies her with worldwide views and experience to strengthen her main graduate degree in ecology.

“The prospect to have coursework and advising in INTAD is fascinating to me because I can combine my pursuits in sustainable agriculture into my thesis and my diploma,” reported Gray about the application, which is administered by Ag Sciences International. “Beekeeping is a intriguing intersection in which organic and ecological investigation queries satisfy agriculture and sociology, and the INTAD application lets me to examine equally finishes of this in my study.”

Grey holds a bachelor’s degree in environmental biology from Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana. In advance of coming to Penn Point out, she was a heart direct for the Nationwide Aeronautics and Area Administration’s NASA Produce Software in Greenbelt, Maryland. She developed and managed small-expression used distant sensing projects in partnership with NASA science advisers and lover companies.

She also labored as a beekeeping expert at SEED Madagascar, a nongovernmental firm functioning in southeast Madagascar. She offered beekeeping understanding and oversaw a beekeeping sustainable-livelihoods challenge to aid pollinator overall health.

Gray’s history will make her a best fit to undertake her latest task in Kenya, according to her adviser and mentor, Christina Grozinger, Publius Vergilius Maro Professor of Entomology and director of the Middle for Pollinator Exploration at Penn State.

The centre has labored with the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology, Nairobi, Kenya, the place Gray is stationed, for much more than 15 a long time on a number of jobs, which include scientific studies of bee well being in Kenya.

“I was so fired up when Darcy utilized to Penn Condition for her graduate research,” mentioned Grozinger. “Her exceptional skill established and broad interests were correctly aligned with addressing some of the most critical issues in knowledge and mitigating the motorists of bee well being and honey output in East Africa.”

Grozinger and Grey discussed that in East Africa, beekeepers whose hives are occupied by migrating swarms of honey bees encounter a problem when the flowering vegetation in the surrounding landscape stop blooming, causing the bees to take in all their honey and migrate yet again.

Beekeepers need to be ready to predict how many colonies their apiaries can aid since that will aid them know how numerous hives to set up. They also will need to know when the crops will get started and stop blooming to know when to set up these vacant hives and when to accumulate honey.

Gray’s exploration will use automatic sensors in hives, satellite imaging of habitat and landscape problems, weather conditions and local climate data, and on-internet site assessments of honey bee colonies and flowering crops to recognize how climate and habitat impact the timing of bee migration and how much honey personal colonies can generate.

“My study will broaden scientists’ and beekeepers’ understanding of the migratory styles of honey bees in Kenya and will have implications that could be applied immediately to assistance a lot more stable livelihoods,” mentioned Gray. “It is crucial that we comprehend what details beekeepers would find most helpful in creating choices about how to deal with their apiaries and colonies.”

Grozinger explained she is amazed with Gray’s potential to make an integrated and holistic venture that spans sociological surveys, automated sensors to monitor honey bee colony dynamics, remote sensing info, and ecological stats. “While immediately addressing the wants of beekeepers in Kenya, the approach that Darcy develops will be relevant broadly, in Africa and all-around the planet,” claimed Grozinger.

Gray stated that the chance to operate in Grozinger’s lab was a important aspect in her conclusion to go to Penn Condition. “I am intrigued in interdisciplinary study and the integration of mapping, forage and climatic variables similar to honey bee wellness,” she claimed. “Having these opportunities though doing the job with a world-renowned pollinator scientist drew me to Penn State.”

The Fulbright Plan has furnished additional than 380,000 contributors the possibility to analyze overseas since its inception in 1946. The major resource of funding is appropriated by Congress to the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Instructional and Cultural Affairs. The participating governments and host establishments, along with firms and foundations, also supply help.