Table of Contents

WHO, WHAT,
WHEN, WHERE

• Notables
• Grants
• Articles Published
• New Projects
• New Publications

HEADLINES

• Division of Agriculture Field Days

• Yanbin Li named to Tyson Chair in Biosensing Engineering

• New headquarters for Fruit Substation and SEBS

• Jim Moore named to ASHS Hall of Fame; Navaho named Outstanding Cultivar

• New York Times reports on Arkansas blackberries

• Poultry youth campers develop new products

• Belize team to receive Faculty-Student Collaboration Award

• Delta Classic raises scholarship funds

• Animal Science student is Bodenhamer Fellow

• Carver program provides taste of graduate school

• Don Herring retires as AEED head

• Bentley joins Division administrative team

• Bees removed from Old Main tower, put to work at AAREC

• Maxwell receives Animal Management Award

• SWCS presents best paper award to Sharpley

• Terry Siebenmorgen receives food engineering award

• ADA names Foote 'Outstanding Dietetics Educator'

• Communications projects win national awards

• Faculty members attend teaching camp

• 4-H O'Rama comes to campus

• KC Kauffman Scholars visit Bumpers College

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All About Advising
• Monthly newsletter index

UA LInks
• Division of Agriculture
• University of Arkansas
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xxxAgricultural, Food and
xxxLife Sciences
• Arkansas Agricultural
xxxExperiment Station
• Cooperative Extension
xxxService
• Alumni and Development
• Future Students
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Vision Credits
Vision is published six times a year by the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station in the U of A System's Division of Agriculture and by the Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences. It is produced by the Communication Services unit of the Department of Agricultural and Extension Education, 110 Agriculture Building, U of A, Fayetteville, AR 72701. 479-575-5647.

• Editor: Howell Medders, (hmedders@uark.edu).
• Web manager: David Edmark (dedmark@uark.edu).
• Writers and photographers: Fred Miller and Karen Eskew
• Editorial Assistant: Trina Holman
• Broadcast e-mail support: Arkansas Alumni Association

E-mail items for publication in Vision to ahollan@uark.edu

Bees removed from Old Main tower, put to work at AAREC                                  

Don Steinkraus and Jon Zawislak, ENTO, and Kinco, Inc., carpenter Charles George removed a huge bee hive from Old Main June 19 and installed the colony in a hive at the Arkansas Agricultural Research and Extension Center.

Jon Zawislak checks bees in a colony maintained by the Entomology Graduate Students Club at the Division's Research and Extension Center. They'll have honey to sell next spring.
Students taste-tested honey and pollen in a recent beekeeping class taught by Entomology Professor Don Steinkraus in the Cralley-Warren Research Laboratory. Robby Rorie (left), Austen Jones, Steinkraus and Cesar Solorzano take turns viewing pollen through microscopes.
Jon Zawislak ignites a sample of red sumac as a vacuum pump draws the smoke through a chamber with mite-infested bees inside. Some beekeepers say different smoker fuels help control mites. Zawislak hopes his research will lead to an alternative treatment for the varroa mite, which is the number one enemy of honeybees.

On June 19, Don Steinkraus and graduate student Jon Zawislak, ENTO, spent much of the day in bee suits well above most of campus. Both were chained to a cable, outside of a window on the 5th floor of historic Old Main, where they were called by a carpenter repairing the woodwork, who had noticed honeybees coming and going through a crack.

Once they pried open the window casing, they found a monstrous bee colony -- estimated at more than 100,000 bees -- that had been busy filling a cavity with about six cubic feet of honeycomb. It took about six hours for Steinkraus, Zawislak and Kinco, Inc., carpenter Charles George to remove all the comb without damaging any of the original woodwork.

They vacuumed the bees into a special device and installed them into a hive at the Arkansas Agricultural Research and Extension Center. The comb they removed contained at least 100 pounds of honey, Steinkraus said.

Four new hives at the AAREC were recently built and populated with bees by the Entomology Graduate Students Club, which plans to harvest honey for sale as a fund-raising project.

Steinkraus said the hive of bees removed from Old Main might have a degree of resistance to the varroa mite, a blood-sucking insect that is the number one enemy of honeybees.

Zawislak is conducting a research project to investigate anecdotal evidence that the smoke from burning specific plant materials is an effective natural control agent against mites in bee colonies. Chemical miticides provide effective control, but alternatives are needed because of the ability of the mite to develop resistance to the available miticides, Zawislak said.

Steinkraus said the Old Main colony was not only unusually large and healthy, but also unusually high. He said most hives he has seen are about 10-20 feet high with a maximum of about 60,000 bees. The size is largely determined by the space available for the colony to continue growing, Zawislak said.

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