Brand new bee lab

Brand new lab full of boxes

This is my second week as a new biology professor at Harvey Mudd College. They’ve built me a great new lab, with a special bee room where I’ll be able to keep bumblebees and ants, and maybe someday honeybees as well. It’s got a red light, true blackout shades, and an emergency oh-crap-the-bees-got-out button that triggers them both and turns out the overhead lights. The reason for this is that bees don’t see red very well and they can’t fly in the dark, so when the lights go out they will drop onto the floor where we can pick them up.

Apparently, even before I arrived my lab was a tour destination for visiting dignitaries. Everyone I meet asks me about the bees – some curious, some excited to see them, some worried I’ll loose a bee-pocalypse upon them. But it’ll be a while before I get any animals in the lab, which is anyway right now an empty room full of boxes. First of all there are plenty of bureaucratic loopholes to jump through. And secondly I need students that want to work with them!

In the meantime, I’ve got two great students working with me this summer (funded by HHMI via the 5C’s SURP) on a project that doesn’t require any indoor bees. They’ve been troopers, working in an empty lab, figuring stuff out while we wait for supplies to arrive. I think it’ll be a fun project, playing with Arduino, 3D printing, and watching bees outdoors. But I’ll let them tell you about it – they’ll be contributing to this blog over the summer.