INFORMATION FOR
David Gilley, an assistant professor of biology at William Paterson University whose research focuses on honey bees, will discuss how honey bees communicate as part of a lecture, “Honey Bee Foraging Communication: Its Importance and New Research Findings,” on Sunday, May 1 at 2 p.m. in the Cheng Library Auditorium on the University’s campus in Wayne. Admission is free and open to the public. The lecture is sponsored by the Friends of the Cheng Library at William Paterson University.
Gilley will discuss the life and death struggles prompted by a honey bee’s efforts to survive. If a colony of honey bees does not gather sufficient amounts of nectar and pollen before winter arrives, all of its inhabitants will die. He will also examine the economic and agricultural importance of the honey bees, whose population has been diminishing in recent years.
Gilley, who is New Jersey’s only academic bee researcher, has conducted field research on how bees communicate with each other, and has collected data to examine how pollen-gathering bees report the location of the best food source to the hive. Already, he has discovered the “waggle dance,” a highly developed system of movement language that communicates food locations and directions. Additionally, Gilley monitors his hives for signs of colony collapse disorder (CCD), a disturbing problem that beekeepers have noted in recent years. Prior to his William Paterson faculty appointment, Gilley was a research associate at the U.S.D.A. Agricultural Research Service/Carl Hayden Bee Research Center in Tucson, Arizona.
For additional information, please call the Cheng Library at William Paterson University at 937-720-2113 or email lib-chengfriends@wpunj.edu.
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