Jun 23, 2022
Posted by: Robin Leigh
October 19, 2020
One of the challenges of keeping an ongoing journal of this process is not being repetitive. The person tasked with writing these entries struggles over when it’s ok to use “amazing” (again) and when there’s been a long enough gap to talk about how humbled we are (not yet).
But...we ARE. And there are themes that follow us through every week and every month.
We seek out help and it’s given, generously and enthusiastically. And that fact eases the worry present in every experiment, and reinforces the belief and the knowledge that we are doing the right thing. That can’t be overstated.
When we realized the USDA and Jim wouldn’t be enough to run all the tests we need to move forward, we looked into different lab facilities that could help us. And we found Eurofins. Just look at their website for a minute; they’re a globally renowned, highly respected testing facility, doing everything from forensics to food.
And, they’re incredible at biological research.
And, they have honey bees.
When we reached out to them it was a little intimidating, because even though we’ve gone from wide-eyed noobs to bee professionals, we’re still learning how to create and order testing rounds.
What we found in our first meeting was the warmest, keenest group we’ve worked with so far. Ming and her team are incredibly knowledgeable, and are treating our tests like they’re the most important things in the world. And they are, to us and the bees.
They’re custom designing testing cages to make sure that the results are accurate and efficient, and a full team of biologists, apicologists, and chemists are working on our case.
Coincidentally, Jim lives within driving distance of their lab, so he’ll drop off The Final Five and we’ll be off.
We cannot wait to see what they find.
And see? We didn’t use the word “humbled” once.