Mentor: Baldwyn Torto

Objective:   Crystal Kelts spent the summer carrying out research on two sap beetles, the small hive beetle, a serious pest of honeybee hives, and the picnic beetle, a pest of strawberries in Florida.  For the small hive beetle, she studied oviposition behavior focusing on the effect of beetle population density on egg laying.  For the picnic beetle, she was involved in pheromone identification which included collection of volatiles from different sexes of the beetle and analysis by coupled gas chromatography-electroantennographic detection and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry.

Sexing small hive beetles before collecting volatiles for pheromone analysis.  The apparatus behind the microscope is the volatile collection system.

Feeding small hive beetles with pollen-honey diet in oviposition assays.  Eggs are then transferred into moist sand contained in the chamber located near the cage.