GALVESTON, Texas—Congratulations to Ph.D. student Alex Payne as she recently received an award for Best Student Paper from the American Association of Professional Apiculturists for her talk at the organization’s annual American Bee Research Conference in Galveston in January, 2017.
Payne is mentored by Dr. Juliana Rangel. Her talk at the symposium was titled “The effects of honey bee (Apis mellifera) queen insemination volume on colony growth”.
Her presentation looked at how the volume of semen in a queen who was artificially inseminated affects the overall growth of a honey bee colony over time by comparing hives led by high-inseminated queens to hives with low-inseminated queens.
In her research, Payne wanted to determine if the insemination volume of the queens had any effect on a colony’s growth over time. She said the results of the study concluded that insemination volume did not have an impact on the growth and productivity of the colony. Payne also said that the information from her study helpsqueen breeders and commercial beekeepers when they evaluate the quality of their queens.
Payne enjoyed presenting her research to the audience during the conference and was excited to receive the award from the organization.
“There were a lot of great student presentations at the conference, so I was surprised but happy to learn that I had won an award,” Payne said.