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HiveScience | A Citizen Science Project for Beekeepers

HiveScience is a citizen science project, designed for beekeepers, that promotes EPA-public engagement around collecting data on hive health -- an important research issue at the local, national and international levels. For this project, beekeepers collect data on the health status of honey bee hives, submit a sample of honey for laboratory analysis for biomarkers of honey bee immune response, and provide data on the overwintering fate of sampled hives using an EPA-branded mobile application. Ultimately, these data will be used to determine if there is a correlation between biomarkers of honey bee colony health and actual colony overwintering performance.

Geographic Scope: National

Project Status: Complete - not recruiting volunteers

Participation Tasks: Observation, Specimen/sample collection,

Start Date: 1/1/2016

Project Contact: Lehmann.David@epa.gov

Federal Government Sponsor:

EPA logo

Other Federal Government Sponsor: U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Institutes of Health (NIH)

Fields of Science: Animals, Ecology and environment

Intended Outcomes: HiveScience is a citizen science project, designed for beekeepers, that promotes EPA-public engagement around collecting data on hive health -- an important research issue at the local, national and international levels. For this project, beekeepers collect data on the health status of honey bee hives, submit a sample of honey for laboratory analysis for biomarkers of honey bee immune response, and provide data on the overwintering fate of sampled hives using an EPA-branded mobile application. Ultimately, these data will be used to determine if there is a correlation between biomarkers of honey bee colony health and actual colony overwintering performance.