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2024 People’s Choice Award goes to bee-saving duo

On July 24, the Partnership for Public Service announced that Yan Ping (Judy) Chen and Jay D. Evans from the Department of Agriculture won the 2024 Samuel J. Heyman Service to America Medals® People’s Choice Award.

At the Agricultural Research Service, Chen and Evans are revolutionizing bee disease diagnosis and treatment through advanced technologies that detect virus pathogens and new medicines that enhance bee health and prevent colony collapse, which occurs when a majority of worker bees abandon their hive.

To celebrate their win, Chen and Evans—known as the Bee Team—discussed their work in the latest installment of the Partnership’s 2024 Sammies Virtual Series. Viewers can watch the full video of this event on the Partnership’s YouTube channel.

Improving bee health

Although honeybees are critical for the world’s food supply, their populations have been declining over the past two decades.  By applying innovative molecular and genomic technologies, Chen and Evans developed therapies to reverse colony collapse and transform bee disease diagnostic systems.

“Our collaboration began over two decades ago driven by our sheer passion for bee health,” said Chen, research leader for the Agricultural Research Service. “The catalyst for forming the Bee Team was a growing concern over the decline of the honeybee population and the increasing threat from pesticides and diseases.”

To determine which threats harm bees the most—habitat loss, pesticide use, global warming, pathogens or antibiotic resistance—the team is “working with [their] primary nurses, beekeepers,” according to Evans, lead scientist at the ARS.

The Bee Team is making incredible progress to improve the lives of bees, developing alternative treatments for the Nosema parasite, effective solutions for the Varroa mite, a “bee detox technology” using a family of sugar compounds called cyclodextrins and more therapies with natural remedies.

“Serving in a public agency, we really do feel like our work can have an impact in the short term and in the long term,” Evans said. “[The federal government] has given me the opportunity to work on significant projects that directly impact the public’s health and the environment,” echoed Chen.

Learn more about the Bee Team

Chen and Evans continue to create innovative methods to diagnosis problems for bee health and novel technologies to treat unhealthy bee populations. Learn more about their work and the accomplishments of our other Sammies finalists.

The Partnership will announce the winners of this years’ Service to America Medals® in September.

💡Visit our Protecting Democracy website to learn why career civil servants are vital to our democracy and how you can join us in supporting the nonpartisan, merit-based federal workforce.

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