Last year I visited the famous USGS Wild Bee Lab, just outside Greenbelt, with its funky little building, amazing macro photography, and native plants galore. I got to interview the famous Sam Droege, who heads up the lab and is an incredible spokesman for native bees and plants.

But then Jay Evans, another bee expert, moved into my GHI court and I started hearing about him and his research.

First, with this release published in the Greenbelt News Review, we learned that Agricultural Research Service research entomologist Jay Evans had been appointed a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which is apparently a big deal. He’s described as a “a lead scientist in ARS’s Bee Research Laboratory in Beltsville, Maryland, recognized for distinguished contributions to the fields of arthropod genomics, social insect biology, pollinator health and insect pathology—particularly studies of honey bee immunity and pathogens.”

Then he won a Sammie – called the “Oscars of federal service” – the People Choice Award, no less! In this announcement we read that Jay and his research partner “revolutionized bee disease diagnosis and treatment, introducing cutting-edge technologies to detect virus pathogens and developing novel medicines to enhance bee health and prevent colony collapse.”

Honeybees are vital to the world’s food supply, but their populations have been mostly in decline over the past two decades due to various factors, including habitat loss, pesticide use, global warming, the rapid evolution of pathogens and antibiotic resistance. Judy Chen and Jay Evans from the Agricultural Research Service have developed therapies to reverse colony collapse and revolutionized bee disease diagnostic systems by introducing innovative molecular and genomic technologies into the search for treatments…Chen calls herself a “a bee doctor.” Evans said he “treats each colony like it is a human patient.”

Chen and Evans were the first to report the presence of the Nosema parasite in U.S. honeybee populations, the cause of a devastating disease for bee colonies.

Geekier people than I can keep reading to learn more. Or read this 2017 article by Jay about what goes on at the lab.

So naturally I asked Jay for a tour for me and Catherine Plaisant, who volunteers at the Wild Bee Lab and asked to join me.

The honeybee lab

Jay said yes, and a week later Catherine and I drove to BARC and arrived at Bldg. 360, the boring office building where the bee lab team is housed in part of one floor, where beekeeper suits signal what’s happening down the hall. The team includes up to 40 people at a time, including interns, some of which attend the local STEM magnet high school.

We stopped to see another hallway display – a rotating beehive with actual live bees.

So I looked and listened, mostly to Jay conversing with Catherine, who’s a research scientist (retired from UMD) and pretty familiar with bees, too. But I did catch a research finding that I actually understand – that over 200 natural compounds had been tested for their effect on honeybee immunity and one finding they’re exploring farther is that mint is sought out by virus-infected bees, who then become more immune to the virus. Curiously, only infected bees seek out mint, for the thymol it contains.

So here’s where all that award-winning, vital research is taking place – a rather typical-looking lab, like the ones I see on campus all the time.

And seeing Jay’s very own work station reminds me of the term “bench scientist.”

Above, still-mostly-alive bees gradually dying after being infected with a virus. The rate of death associated with treatments with various compounds is then recorded. Jay noticed Catherine and I wincing and we collectively reminded ourselves that even the wild bee lab has to kill the bees that Sam identifies and records. A few die so that others may live.

Honeybees on Campus

The Honeybee Lab is a small part of BARC’s 6,600 acres, where I once toured its cow-manure-composting facility, and where so many Greenbelters cycle on its iconically named roads –  like Animal Husbandry Road –  and where the landscape looks more like rural Iowa than suburban DC.

Among the agricultural fields are 12 apiaries, which are clusters of hives, so there are 300 colonies in all. Their main sources of nectar are black and honey locust, tulip poplar, and basswood, and they get a lot of pollen from maples early. In dry years there may not be enough after the spring flush of tree-flowering, so their diets are supplemented with sugar water after the honey is pulled off. That’s because the vegetation in the area – mainly farm fields – may not support them.

 I am a honey bee snob, so I think they can get along with other species, and they are by definition placed in human-altered settings, not the most pristine spots with endemic plants and bees..but some competition can happen. On the whole, bees and beekeeping are a positive, but you knew I’d say that. Here’s a short essay of mine – “Bees Good” on Found in Translation here:  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GYkR_MjMSh4hU98bQtmwPZ_2clExxODq/view

Current threats to our bee labs

Circling back to Sam Droege’s Wild (native) Bee Lab with its world-renowned collection of bees and macro photos thereof, I was sickened to learn that DOGE immediately threatened to shut it down. That prompted Sam to campaign everywhere he could for its survival, including in a front-page story in the Washington Post. (Gift link. Let me know if it doesn’t work.)  From that article I learned that:

• The Trump administration’s  2026 budget proposal calls for the defunding of the bee lab and other federally funded wildlife research efforts and has proposed eliminating the wild bee lab as of October 1, 2025.
• Sam was told not to speak out publicly about the proposed closure but “The warning hasn’t deterred him.” Thus, the WashPost article and lots of others, plus many postings to Facebook.  (He frequently posts this article about federal workers’ right to speak out.)
• The lab has collected and identified more than 1 million specimens of pollinators.
• The lab has provide data for more than 800 papers over the last 20 years.

The lab’s volunteers, including Catherine, have been frantically preparing for a shutdown, finding new places to house the collection, moving plants, and – well, I can’t imagine what’s involved but it’s a lot, and infuriating. And so pointless.

So far, I have no information about the possible closure of the USDA Honeybee lab.