ars

This story has three parts. Please look for the next two parts over the next two days.

July 15 was one of the most exciting days I’ve experienced in my short time as co-beekeeper for the USDA People’s Garden. It was hot, humid, and hazy that morning, when I—together with seven partners and volunteers—went up to the roof of the USDA headquarters building, just off the National Mall, to harvest the first batch of honey ever produced by the USDA People’s Garden beehive.

This post is part of the Science Tuesday feature series on the USDA blog. Check back each week as we showcase stories and news from the USDA’s rich science and research portfolio.

What are U.S. farms like?  Are they largely family businesses, or corporate operations?  Describing farms is challenging because they vary in size and other characteristics, ranging from very small retirement and residential farms to businesses with sales in the millions of dollars.  Descriptions based on U.S. averages hide much of the variation.

Written By Jessica L. Morrison; USDA Forest Service Conservation Education Intern

As a volunteer intern for the Conservation Education department of the Forest Service, I was not expecting much more than to be cooped up in a cubical somewhere; making copies and filing things away into nonexistence. But almost as soon as I arrived at the agency’s big red building, my supervisor made that wouldn’t happen. Besides getting to weed the USDA’s roof gardens and learning how to pet bumblebees, I was given the opportunity to tag along as the film crew of PollinatorLIVE interviewed the youngest beekeeper in the D.C. area.

This post is part of the Science Tuesday feature series on the USDA blog. Check back each week as we showcase stories and news from the USDA's rich science and research portfolio.

By Tara Weaver-Missick, Branch Chief, with the USDA-Agricultural Research Service (ARS)

Summer field sports are under way, and sports fans around the world are having spirited discussions on their favorite team’s chances of winning.  A key factor of sports success is the condition of the field, and USDA scientists are just as interested in those field conditions—but from the angle of fighting the bugs that could be eating the field!

Written by Rick Borchelt

Butterflies are a great barometer of the health of our environment – because they spend part of their lives as caterpillars eating leaves and other vegetation, and part as adults visiting flowers and other food sources, they can be exposed to many contaminants that give us an early warning of problems in the ecosystem.  Butterflies are often used as an early signal that critical habitat is being eroded or lost because many of them are finicky about the kind of habitat they require and have a narrow range of plants they can feed on.

By Vincent M. Russo, Research Leader, ARS South Central Agricultural Research Laboratory and Tasha Askew, Bill Emerson National Hunger Fellow, USDA Center for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships

Just in time for the 2010 Feds, Farmers, and Friends Feed Families Food Drive, is two-thousand one-hundred pounds of produce gleaned from the Oklahoma People’s Garden in conjunction with the Choctaw Nation. What an astounding amount of food to be gathered during one month!

This post is part of the Science Tuesday feature series on the USDA blog. Check back each week as we showcase stories and news from the USDA's rich science and research portfolio.

By Avtar Handa, Purdue University

I don’t know about you, but I find it frustrating to go into the grocery store looking for fresh fruit only to find the selection has already started to shrivel. Shelf life can be a problem all across the United States for regions that need to ship in produce. And it’s an even bigger problem for countries in Southeast Asia and Africa that cannot afford controlled-environment storage.

Did you know that less than one in ten thousand bees sting? Most of the stings that you and I have experienced are at the hands of wasps and hornets and their relatives; they are hunters that sting several times a day. Bees, however, only sting when they feel threatened and die shortly thereafter. It’s easy to tell whether you’ve been stung by a bee: bees leave their stinger behind. If there’s no stinger left and just a welt, you were stung by a wasp or hornet.

Written by Kayla Harless, People’s Garden Intern

The People’s Garden workshops have yet to be anything less than an informative and fun time! Today, Don Weber, a research entomologist with USDA Agricultural Research Service’s Invasive Insect Biocontrol and Behavior Laboratory in Beltsville, Maryland, taught us about pests and their natural enemies.

Our instructor pointed out that most bugs are not harmful. In fact, even some viruses and fungi can be beneficial. Whether or not something is a pest is simply a matter of whether you want that item where it is.

This post is part of the Science Tuesday feature series on the USDA blog. Check back each week as we showcase stories and news from the USDA's rich science and research portfolio.

By Tara T. Weaver-Missick, Chief, Information Products and Services Branch, USDA Agricultural Research Service, Information Staff