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The Yale Alumni Magazine is owned and operated by Yale Alumni Publications, Inc., a nonprofit corporation independent of Yale University. The content of the magazine and its website is the responsibility of the editors and does not necessarily reflect the views of Yale or its officers. |
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May Berenbaum ’75 is one of the most accomplished entomologists in the country. Head of the Department of Entomology at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for 15 years, Berenbaum has earned numerous awards and distinctions for teaching and research. She also has a sideline as, in her own words, a PR person for insects.” Her annual Insect Fear Film Festival is now in its 25th year, and in 2000 she published her fourth book for lay readers, Buzzwords: A Scientist Muses on Sex, Bugs, and Rock 'n' Roll. Y: The mainstream media have gone bananas lately over honeybee colony collapse disorder. What is CCD, exactly? B: Basically, it’s the precipitous disappearance of large numbers of older adult bees from a colony for no known reason. Typically, individuals left behind include a handful of young nurses tending to a healthy queen and apparently healthy brood, along with seemingly adequate stores of honey and pollen. Y: The cause is still a mystery, correct? B: Absolutely. Lots of people are working hard to figure it out, but it’s complicated for a number of reasons, not the least of which is because they're a social species. Is it genetic or is it just the enormous stress of having half of one’s nest-mates gone? Bees know when half of the colony is gone. If you woke up to find half of your home city missing, you'd know. That stress could influence the bees' biology. Y: What’s the most preposterous explanation for CCD you’ve seen to date? B: Bee rapture. Yes—as in all the bees are suddenly summoned back to heaven. Oh, and alien abduction. Another person e-mailed me to say they were killed on automobile grilles because of all the traffic. Contrails or chemical trails from jetliners—I don’t really understand that one. Chernobyl was another, and there was also genetically modified crops, and Osama bin Laden. Actually, bin Laden did have an interest in a honey factory in Yemen at one time. Y: Insects have been in the news a lot recently. B: Last year there was the paper about the honeybee genome in [the journal] Nature, as well as the National Academy of Sciences report on the state of pollinators. Soon after that, honeybee colony collapse disorder was being investigated, and word was getting out to the agriculture community. Then the New York Times ran a story on it. Now there’s language in the Farm Bill for pollinator protection. Which is just astonishing. Y: When will entomologists stop being surprised about media coverage? B: Never. I write a column for the American Entomologist, sort of a humor column, or humorous among entomologists. I wrote one on media coverage of CCD, collecting all the bee-related puns. I sometimes wonder if they [the media] like this topic because of the endless fun with headlines. Researchers Beefuddled,” or Researchers Beemoan,” and Bee Very Afraid.” Oh, there’re just so many of them. Y: Why has CCD resonated so strongly? B: I think that the public cares because it’s an environmental crisis that’s understandable. It doesn’t require understanding of atmospheric chemistry. It’s birds and the bees; it’s pollination! It’s graspable. Y: What’s the concise version of your came-to-be-an-entomologist story? And does Yale have any part in that script? B: Yale is where I became an entomologist. I was always interested in plants and animals. But I was an entomophobe as a kid, maybe from around age seven. At Yale, I took Terrestrial Arthropods, taught by Charles Remington [who died in May—see Milestones]. I figured I could learn which insects I should be afraid of. Y: What’s something you dislike about your job? B: The tough part is undergrads that don’t care. One of the classes I teach is called Insects and People. It’s a general education course. All of our 26,000 undergrads have to take three hours of life sciences to be well-rounded people. Y: Are you being sarcastic? B: Yes. Y: I once saw a clip in which the Dalai Lama spoke about loving all creatures, including mosquitoes. As an entomologist, do you feel the same, or is it kosher to detest mosquitoes? B: Biologically, it’s the microorganisms that mosquitoes carry that harm humans. That said, I respect mosquitoes, but I don’t like to room with them. Y: I imagine it'd be hard to be an entomologist without a sense of humor. B: It’s true. If you look at entomology, it has enormous economic and
health impacts. Insect-borne disease is the leading cause of death for children
under five, and for disease-related death, malaria is like the number-one
killer. Yet people say: Oh! You study bugs,” in this how-odd” tone of voice.
They assume you weren’t properly socialized as a child. People accept that
microbiology is serious business. There’s nothing funny about germs. But with
entomology, street cred doesn’t come automatically. A sense of humor helps you
deal with that. |
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