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By Amro, May 19, 2011

Represent!

Clement and The Bernini Fountain in Rome.. Note the 3 bees!

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By Amro, May 14, 2011

May 10 – Boxing Day

Jack and the box

“Do you know how to use a hammer?” I asked
“Yes!” nodded Arash
“Great, you’ll get bottom boards!… Brock and Jack get the box, Alex and I will do the telescoping covers.”

… and so our experiment started with preparing 50 hive boxes – the future home of 50 honey bee colonies that we will setup later for our study.  The boxes are a half-size version of the standard Langstroth hive and come unassembled as 16 pieces of wood and 80+ nails per hive.

We finished them off by 4 pm, a good day ahead of schedule.  “I want you all to update your CV’s with ‘Strong With Hammer’ ” I joked over lunch.

Beeautiful

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By Amro, May 12, 2011

The ’11 Experiment:
Starting: Brock, Alex, Jack, and Arash (L to R)
Produced and Directed by Amro (Behind the Camera)

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By Amro, May 12, 2011

We will be embarking on a major experiment this year – the inaugural field experiment at our research Apiary! I’ve decided to run a little blog about it.  I thought it would be fun to track the course of the experiment, the researchers, and the bees! Also, our website gets more than 600 hits a month with many regulars (Hello! Brock’s Mom, and Bonsoir! visitor from Paris), so I thought some regular updates might keep our regulars happy  🙂 Finally, the blog will be Tarantino’esque (i.e. not always in chronological order… we wouldn’t want to get scooped, would we? )

So, what is the experiment about… read on to find out!

Amro

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By Amro, May 6, 2011

Alexandra Bunting, Brock Harpur, and Shermineh Minaei will be giving presentations on their research this weekend at the Ontario Ecology, Ethology and Evolution Colloquium (OE3C; May 6 – 8, 2011 at the University of Toronto, Scarborough campus)

Dr. Clement Kent will also be giving a presentation at the International Behavioural and Neural Genetics Society’s 13th annual meeting in Rome, Italy (May 11-14)

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By Amro, March 7, 2011

I’ve been having fun reading/using two recent bee books: Laurence Packer’s Keeping the Bees and May Berenbaum ‘s Honey, I’m Homemade

Laurence is a former-mentor and now colleague at York University’ Department of Biology – the book is very informative and fun to read.  I am a bit biased however, as I like to think that I am the hero of chapter 8 !

May’s book is a great compilation of desserts using honey as an ingredient (I’ve been salivating over the Norwegian Rice Custard recipe on page 113)… Remember to buy honey from your local beekeeper before trying out the recipes!

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By Amro, March 7, 2011

Congrats to Alexandra Bunting and Jack Xu for wining the ultra-competitive Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada’s Undergraduate Student Research Award.  The awards will allow Alex and Jack to participate in full-time research in the lab during the summer 🙂  This is the second competitive award to Alexandra who has been working in the lab since last year.  Way to go guys!

Amro

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By Amro, October 15, 2010

Congrats to Alexandra Bunting (RAY student in the lab) for earning a York Technology Alliance Award.

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By Amro, September 2, 2010

I am happy to announce that I have been awarded the Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation’s Early Researcher Award. The award will facilitate the lab’s research on honey bee genes, behaviour, and adaptation.

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By Amro, September 2, 2010

The honey bee as a model organism has many advantages (haplodiploidy, high recombination rate, huge family sizes, well known ecology and physiology, etc.).  A subtle and understated advantage is unlike other lab critters, you don’t have to feed them… as a matter of fact, the bees feed you! Here are a few pictures of our honey harvest from a couple of weekends ago.  A very rewarding experience after a long and warm field season!

Our first spin!

(L->R: Alex, Jen, Brock, Amro)