Emily Watkins De Jong

• Oversees 50-500 honey bee colonies in local and commercial settings for research programs focused honeybee nutrition and overwintering. Responsibilities include colony installation, maintaining queen-right colonies, making splits, and relocation between local apiaries and California and North Dakota agricultural sites. Also manages food stores, hive equipment, disease and mite monitoring, and treatments.
• Manages research apiaries
• Conducts field research experiments with honey bee colonies, utilizing USDA and commercial colonies. Tasks involve experimental design, hive evaluations, record-keeping, data collection, and biological sample collection for chemical and physiological analyses.
• Ensures laboratory safety standards, manages chemical inventories and safety documents, and follows waste disposal protocols.
• Performs general laboratory duties such as preparing chemical solutions, insect dissection, processing Varroa mite screening samples, and evaluating honey bee samples for Nosema infection.
• Conducts laboratory experiments with caged honey bees, including sample collection, cage maintenance, treatment delivery, data collection, and longevity monitoring.
• Performs laboratory assays on honey bee and diet samples using chemical, physiological, and molecular techniques such as colorimetric spectrophotometry, RNA & DNA extraction, gel electrophoresis, PCR, and real-time PCR, and GC-MS analysis of fatty and amino acids.
• Collects, evaluates, verifies, summarizes, statistically analyzes, and manages storage of hive evaluation data, laboratory assay data, and incoming data from external analyses.
• Assists in manuscript and presentation writing and editing, literature review, and figure and diagram creation.
• Creates project schedules, organizes workflow, directs field activities, resolves technical difficulties, and supervises student workers.

• Engaged in research focusing on nutrition management in apiculture and seasonal host-parasite trends in Varroa. Thesis titled: "Investigating the Impact of Varroa Mite (Acari: Varroidae) Host Selection Behavior and Migration on Mite Population Dynamics."

• Oversaw and monitored hives for field experiments and conducted laboratory studies using caged honey bees. Utilized various techniques including colorimetric spectrophotometry with a BioTek plate reader for protein analysis, and GC-MS analysis for identifying honeybee cuticular hydrocarbon composition using an Agilent GC/MS instrument.

• Provided assistance to USDA research personnel across various projects concerning honey bee behavior, biology. and physiology.

• Volunteer under Dr. Jean-Marc Fellous and Dr. Laurel Watkins de Jong
• Exploring spatial navigation and decision-making in rats and the roles of the hippocampus and ventral tegemental area in the context of the Traveling Salesperson Problem.
• Maintained populations of rats for use in experiments and coordinated feeding and light-cycle schedules corresponding to experimental needs.
• Facilitated behavioral experiments in an open-field arena and collected data from electrodes implanted in the hippocampus of experimental animals.