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Over the years, researchers across Texas A&M and The Texas A&M University System have cultivated and fine-tuned countless varieties of grains, fruits, vegetables and meats. By focusing these projects on creating high-quality, efficient, economical and environmentally-sound products, Texas A&M has left its mark across the food industry, on everything from carrots to salsa. The Department of Entomology recently released one of the sweetest foods ever made by insects a few weeks ago — Texas Aggie Honey!

It’s one of the newest Aggie-created foods and how sweet it is: for the first time ever this year, staff at Texas A&M’s new John G. Thomas Honey Bee Facility have produced the first summer crop of genuine Aggie Honey. The beehives were established in March near the 6,500 square-foot facility on Texas A&M’s Riverside Campus. “We had a good year here in College Station in terms of honey-making bee forage,” says Juliana Rangel, Texas A&M AgriLife Research assistant professor of apiculture at the facility. “There doesn’t seem to be a lot of beekeepers close to our apiary, so our bees were able to tap into all the local forage in the nearby land which is largely owned by A&M, so this honey is truly Aggie Honey, made by Aggie bees, foraging on Aggieland.”

Producing and selling Aggie Honey has been done in fun, says Rangel, but it has a far more important purpose: raising awareness of honey bees and the university’s honey bee research. “We want to make people across the state aware that we have a research facility that is working on honey bee health issues,” she adds. “We hope our Aggie Honey project will be a way the public can buy an excellent all-natural product while helping to support our research.”

Aggie Honey is being sold in the main office of the Department of Entomology (Heep Bldg. Room 412, 979-845-2516) and at the Rosenthal Meat Center on campus, with all proceeds going to directly help fund the honey bee research program. Learn more about the honey bee lab.

Senior Academic Advisor Rebecca Hapes now has another title to add to her resume –National Chair for the Advising Graduate and Professional Students Commission.

Hapes was elected this position in early 2013 and assumed the position during the National Academic Advising Association’s (NACADA) annual meeting in early October held at Salt Lake City. The committee is comprised of those who advise graduate and post-baccalaureate and professional students and provides a collegial and mutually supportive context for discussing issues concerning graduate and professional students.

Hapes said this is her first titled leadership position within the organization. She has served on various commissions, interest groups, as well as the Professional Development Commission Steering Committee.

During her career with the Department, Hapes has been member of several organizations, including the University Advisors and Counselors, where she has served many roles, including President, Vice President for Programs, Symposium Planning Committee Member Advisor Briefing Day(s) Planning Committee Member and member of the Program Planning Committee, among others within that organization. Additionally, she currently serves as a member of the Executive Board for the ATMentors.

She also has received numerous awards from both  NACADA and Texas A&M during her career, including the Ed Guthrie Advisor Award, Robert M. Gates Inspiration Award, and the Vice Chancellor’s Award in Excellence for Student Counseling and Relations. She also received the Region VI Outstanding Advisor- Primary Role Award and the Outstanding Advising Certificate of Merit – Primary Advising category from the NACADA.

Hapes said that the position will help provide increased visibility for the University on a national platform for advising and to provide her with an opportunity to work closely with other professionals that are advising graduate and/or professional students to help improve the Department’s advising programs as a whole.

“It is an honor to be able to serve the NACADA organization and its members and to advance both the goals of this commission and the organization in this manner,” she said.

Hapes will be in her leadership position with the NACADA until October 2015.

BRYAN, Texas — After months of preparation and hard work, members of the public can now get a taste of the sweet rewards that are coming in for the newly-established apiary at the Janice and John G. Thomas Honey Bee Facility.

In an effort to raise awareness of the work being done at the university’s new facility, the staff there are proudly offering their first summer crop of genuine Aggie Honey, said Dr. Juliana Rangel, Texas A&M AgriLife Research assistant professor of apiculture at the facility.

The 450 pounds of raw wildflower honey being labeled and offered to the public at $10 per 16-oz. jar, comes straight from the Department’s apiary or bee yard managed by veteran local beekeeper E.T. Ash.

Rangel said Ash is one of the most knowledgeable beekeepers in the area, with almost 40 years experience. The hives being used for research were established in March near the new 6,500 square-foot Honey Bee Facility on Texas A&M University’s Riverside Campus. The facility, which also houses the Texas Apiary Inspection Service, is named for Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service entomologist emeritus Dr. John Thomas and his wife, both of College Station.

Frame dripping with “Aggie Honey.” (Texas A&M AgriLife Research photo by Dr. Juliana Rangel).

“We had a good year here in College Station in terms of honey-making bee forage,” Rangel said. “There doesn’t seem to be a lot of beekeepers close to our apiary, so our bees were able to tap into all the local forage in the nearby land which is largely owned by A&M, so this honey is truly Aggie Honey, made by Aggie bees, foraging on Aggieland.”

Rangel, who credits Ash for the successful harvest, said she was very pleased with their first season’s production as the colonies were new with no preexisting honey stores. By the end of July, the initial 40 colonies had done so well that they were split to form 80 colonies.

But since Aggie Honey supplies are limited and sales have been brisk, Rangel advises prospective buyers to make a beeline to the entomology department’s main office at 412F Heep Center to take advantage of this sweet deal, or buzz them at 979-845-2516 for more information. Go to http://honeybeelab.tamu.edu  or follow them on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/TAMUhoneybeelab to learn more about the lab and the research Rangel and her team are conducting.

“The Aggie Honey campaign is done all in fun, but we are serious about aggressively getting the word out about our research here,” she said.

Rangel said the entomology department had not had a honey bee research laboratory component in almost four years consequently; they had no bees. She was hired in January and the original 40 colonies were purchased in late March. Those colonies and their subsequent increase are used for work on the reproductive biology of honey bee queens and drones, or male honey bees.

“That’s our main research focus now, because increasingly we are seeing problems of colony losses associated with poor queen and drone quality,” Rangel said. “So our lab is focusing on exploring the biological and environmental factors that affect honey bees’ reproductive quality. In order to do that we do a lot of our own queen rearing using what are known as mating nucleus hives or ‘nucs,’ which are small colonies we use for the sole purpose of raising queens.

“We could potentially sell queens in the future, but we are more interested now in having people test them in their own colonies and provide us feedback on how they perform.”

Aggie Honey label designed by Visualization student Madison Suhr. Suhr recently won the contest where participants helped design the new label for the honey. (Photo submitted)

Rangel said in the past beekeepers normally kept queens in a hive for two to three years, but now there are so many issues with queens that beekeepers increasingly report losing queens after the first year. Some are even being lost within months to the worker bees in a process called queen supersedure, the cause of which is another area of Rangel’s research. So bottom line, she said, people who depend on their bees for a livelihood are requeening every year to avoid the problem, but that can be time consuming and expensive and there need to be alternatives for beekeepers.

Rangel said she has extensive experience conducting queen-rearing workshops stemming from her work with the “Born and Bred in North Carolina” queen-rearing program. She spearheaded the program for three years while at North Carolina State University, her previous employer, and hopes to launch a similar effort here.

“It’s fun and it’s a very interesting process, because you learn a lot about basic bee biology by raising queens,” she said. “So that is an educational area I’d like to pursue soon.

“As to the Aggie Honey sales, we’re not in the business of making money, but we really do want to raise awareness of honey bees and our honey bee research. We want to make people across the state aware that we have a research facility that is working on honey bee health issues. We hope our Aggie Honey project will be a way the public can buy an excellent all natural product while helping to directly support our research.”

OVERTON, Texas — The Department of Entomology and the Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service recently named Erfan Vafaie as the Extension Program Specalist I in Overton. Vafaie will start his position at the Texas A&M AgriLife Research and Extension Center team in Overton on December 2.

Before being hired at Texas A&M AgriLife Extension, Vafaie was a research technician at the Vineland Research and Innovation Centre in Ontario, Canada. While at Vineland, he researched biological control of whiteflies and spotted wing Drosophila flies. He also was responsible for direct communication with growers and other industry and research fellows. He also worked as an IPM consultant for Integrated Crop Research and Management and an Operations Associate Intern at Urban Produce, Inc.

Vafaie gained experience as a  research assistant at the Institut De Recherche En Biologie Vegetale in Montreal,Quebec where he worked under the supervision of Dr. Jaques Brodeur. In that position, he conducted research on the voracity of different species of lady beetles and ground beetles, as well as assisting in the collection and assessment of pests in two willow wood tree plantations. He also was involved in collecting and rearing swallow parasites from more than 200 nests in the outer Montreal region.

Vafaie received a Bachelor of Science with Honors in Biology from the University of Western Ontario and then his Masters in Pest Management, Integrated Pest Management from Simon Fraser University. He has received several awards and honors, including the B.P. Beirne Prize in Pest Management, the Thelma Finlayson Graduate Fellowship and the Millennium Scholarship.

Extension program leader and statewide IPM coordinator Charles Allen was very excited to see Vafaie come aboard to Overton.

“We are very happy to have Mr. Erfan Vafaie joining the Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service IPM team,” Allen said. “The selection committee is thrilled to have Erfan coming to work with them. I think he will be a great addition to the IPM program and a tremendous asset to Texas nursery and greenhouse growers.”

Allen was very impressed at Vafaie’s expertise and communication skills and said that he would be a great asset to the Overton AgriLife Center and Extension.

“He impressed the group with his knowledge, attitude, communication skills and willingness to go to work to help them solve IPM related problems. His background equips him well for the job,” Allen said.