URI_Research _Magazine_Momentum_Spring_2020_Melissa-McCarthy

The development of new compounds for varroa management starts in a round bottom flask.

As a relatively new project beginning in 2019, the bee lab received initial start-up funding from the URI Division of Research and Economic Development and has applied for funding from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). Both Kiesewetter and Alm remain hopeful for the future of the project, and Alm says he is grateful that URI provides him with a space work with the bees. “You can’t do everything in the lab,” Alm says. “You need field space, and the University helps us by keeping East Farm available. We are very fortunate to have a facility so close to the Kingston Campus. That is huge.” For Kiesewetter, the research offers a chance to do something different. “The general public’s perception of what chemists do is not all that wrong,” he says. “It is a lot of flasks, a lot of beakers, you are in a lab, and you keep your nice healthy pale complexion. But to see the other side of this, spending time at URI’s East Farm with researchers who care as much about the science as we do, it is entirely different. They are in a field, in the flowers, it is sunny and there are butterflies and bees buzzing around you, and it is this wonderful life you are leading out there. It has been really exciting to get involved in that.”

Test vaporization of a compound to manage varroa mites.

Page 10 | The University of Rhode Island { MOMENTUM: RESEARCH & INNOVATION }