new president-elect: Mike Sharkey

As was announced at the ISH symposium at the Entomological Society of America annual meeting in Reno, our new president-elect is Dr. Michael J. Sharkey from the University of Kentucky. Congratulations Mike!

Vote for ISH president - by November 7th

This is just a friendly reminder that the ISH presidential election comes to a close one week from tomorrow. There are several ways to vote for president-elect: 1) email the secretary (secretary@hymenopterists.org) with your choice written in the body of the email, 2) attach your official ballot to an email and send to the secretary, 3) mail your ballot to the secretary:

Andy Deans, ISH secretary
Department of Entomology
NC State University
Box 7613
Raleigh, NC 27695 USA

If you have any questions let me know! The new president-elect will be announced at the ISH symposium at the Entomological Society of America annual meeting and on this blog on November 16.

Andy Austin receives the ISH Service Award

Mike Schauff presents the service award to Andy Austin.

Andy Austin (belatedly) received the ISH service award at our business meeting at this year's International Congress of Entomology in Durban. Congratulations Andy! And thanks for all your hard work in making ISH run smoothly.

ISH symposium now posted

The ISH symposium at ESA has now been posted. We have some excellent talks that focus mostly on Aculeata. The details:

1:30 PM-5:30 PM on Sunday, November 16, 2008
Room E1, First Floor (Reno-Sparks Convention Center)

Alex Rasnitsyn awarded ISH Research Medal

Prof. Dr. Alexandr Pavlovich Rasnitsyn was awarded the International Society of Hymenopterists Distinguished Research Medal for his life-long (and very much active) research program on the evolution of Hymenoptera. Susanne Schulmeister assembled a nice tribute on the main ISH website. Congratulations Alex!

bumble bees helping to catch serial killers

Here's another way (of the myriad ways) that hymenopterans are useful and interesting. The BBC reports that bumble bees (Apidae: Bombus) could be used indirectly to catch serial killers in the U.K. By focusing on their foraging ecology, models could be developed to inform police on the habits of serial killers.

copyright Merlin_1.

Update: Looks like ScienceDaily picked up the story as well, accompanied by a picture of Xylocopa (Apidae) (possibly X. virginica). Hmmm...

pathogens in bumble bees

I forgot this article in PLoS ONE by Otterstatter & Thomson, which describes the potential for pathogens from Europe-raised bumble bees (Apidae: Bombus) to affect (negatively) the species native to the U.S.A.