- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Newly retired from teaching but not entirely from research, Page holds the titles of ASU Provost Emeritus and Regents Professor Emeritus, as well as UC Davis Entomology Chair Emeritus.
Bee World published his article, "The Art of the Bee," as well as a one-on-one interview with editor Robert Brodschneider in a piece titled "Robert E. Page Jr--Mapper of the Genetic Architecture of the Honey Bee."
In his article, Page zeroes in on his latest book, The Art of the Bee: Shaping the Environment from Landscapes to Societies, 2020, Oxford University Press), focusing on the importance of honey bees and making science understandable to the public.
Page applauds the work of Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859), known as a German geographer, naturalist, explorer, and proponent of Romantic philosophy and science.
"Von Humboldt appealed to artists to learn about nature, and ecology, and paint it," Page wrote. "He believed that artists and writers could do more to advance an understanding of science and nature than the scientific specialist. His plea was for making science understandable to the public, a plea for popular science."
Page strongly supports that plea. Earlier this year, he created a free and publicly accessible YouTube channel, "The Art of the Bee," at https://www.youtube.com/@artofthebee to do just that.
His YouTube channel guides the viewer through "the fascinating biology and behavior of the bee," presented in 38 videos from 4 to 27 minutes in length. He organized the videos into six series that roughly correspond to the nine chapters of the book. He included "a rich set of illustrations, images, and videos, to paint a narrative in the spirit of von Humboldt."
In the first segment, Page writes: "One hundred twenty-five million years ago, the earth exploded with colour with the rapid evolution of flowering plants. The explosion coincided with a rapid increase of species of bees. The bees and flowering plants were locked in a dialectical dance of coevolution, each becoming adapted to the other. The flowers evolved to exploit the feeding habits of bees, and bees evolved to rob the flowers of their precious loads of pollen and nectar. Bees became social and developed communication and navigational systems to better exploit their environment. They continue to transform our world through their effects on the agricultural landscapes and the food we eat. Honey bees have evolved mechanisms to forage optimally both as individuals and colonies, expending their energy and short lives to maximally provision their nest. Their communication system directs foragers to different floral patches at different times of day reflected in the changing kaleidoscope of colour on the legs of returning pollen foragers. Their pollination transforms the landscape in the spring into splashes of colour resembling a painter's pallet."
Page's Bee World article includes this text from his book: "The impact of bees on our world is immeasurable. Bees are responsible for the evolution of the vast array of brightly-colored flowers and for engineering the niches of multitudes of plants, animals, and microbes. They've painted our landscapes with flowers through their pollination activities and have evolved the most complex societies to aid their exploitation of the environment. The biology of the honey bee is one that reflects their role in transforming environments with their anatomical adaptations and a complex language that together function to exploit floral resources. A complex social system that includes a division of labour builds, defends, and provisions nests containing tens of thousands of individuals, only one of whom reproduces. Traditional biology texts present stratified layers of knowledge where the reader excavates levels of biological organization, each building on the last. This book (The Art of the Bee: Shaping the Environment from Landscapes to Societies) presents fundamental biology, not in layers, but wrapped around interesting themes and concepts, and in ways designed to explore and understand each concept. It examines the coevolution of bees and flowering plants, bees as engineers of the environment, the evolution of sociality, the honey bee as a superorganism and how it evolves, and the mating behaviour of the queen."
Native of Bakersfield. A native of Bakersfield, Rob holds a bachelor's degree in entomology (1976), with a minor in chemistry, from San Jose State University. He obtained his doctorate in entomology (1980) from UC Davis; joined the UC Davis faculty in 1989; and chaired the Department of Entomology from 1999 to 2004.
After retiring from UC Davis in 2004, he accepted an appointment at Arizona State University as founding director of the School of Life Sciences. He served as provost of Arizona State University (2013- 2015) and dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (2011-2013). His research on honey bee behavior and genetics appears in his publications Queen Rearing and Bee Breeding (1997, with Harry H. Laidlaw Jr., his doctoral research mentor at UC Davis and "the father of honey bee genetics"); The Spirit of the Hive, Harvard University Press (2013); and The Art of the Bee, Oxford University Press (2020). His 230-plus research papers have been cited more than 20,000 times.
Much of his research occurred at UC Davis. For 24 years, from 1989 to 2015, Page maintained a honey bee-breeding program, managed by bee breeder-geneticist Kim Fondrk. Their contributions include discovering a link between social behavior and maternal traits in bees. Their work was featured in a cover story in the journal Nature. In all, Nature featured his work on four covers from work mostly done at UC Davis.
Bee World Interview. In the interview with Bee World editor Brodschneider of the Institute of Biology, University of Graz, Austria, Page told him: "I have never been a hobby beekeeper. I have only kept bees for my experimental needs. I have kept more than 300 hives at a time, but I had an excellent technician for about 25 years, Kim Fondrk. Kim could do everything: instrumental insemination, raise queens, manage large numbers of colonies, run gel electrophoresis and PCR in the lab, and even constructed some of the equipment we used in the lab. I was very fortunate because I wasn't a very good beekeeper. I would only pay attention to one thing at a time. I didn't have the eye for seeing apicultural problems."
Brodschneider: "What would you rate as your most important research finding in honey bees?"
Page: "I think that must be mapping the phenotypic and genetic architectures of pollen hoarding behavior. It wasn't a fast 'discovery' but the result of 30 years of being fixated on the question 'how do bees evolve complex social behavior.' I used pollen hoarding (the storing of surplus pollen in the nest) as my study phenotype and looked at all levels of biological organization from gene to complex social interactions to construct the architectures."
Brodschneider: "How about your honey bee breeding experiments?"
Page: "I had three over my career. The first was done with Norman Gary (now emeritus professor, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology). We did a bi-directional selection for resistance to tracheal mites. We did this soon after they were introduced into North America and were causing a lot of problems for beekeepers. We successfully selected a line that was resistant to tracheal mites and another that was very susceptible. We demonstrated that it was possible to select for resistance. The bi-directional selection for pollen hoarding went on for 25 years and was very successful. The high strain stored more than 10 times the amount of pollen in the combs than did the low strain. These strains became our tools to dissect the genetic and phenotypic architectures. Gloria Hoffman at the Tucson USDA research lab, Kim Fondrk, and I did a very careful bi-directional selection study on varroa resistance. We were not successful. We were selecting for physiological resistance of larvae to varroa. This was our only failure. I don't think it is really possible to succeed. I don't think there is sufficient genetic variation. Certainly no one has done it more carefully or more controlled than we did."
Brodschneider: "Which big research questions in bees remain unsolved?"
Page: "They are all big. I think understanding the genetic networks that control behavior, development, and resistance to bee diseases will dominate honey bee research for the next generation. But, there is still so much to learn about basic methods of culturing bees such as: in vitro rearing of queens, drones, and workers; maintaining viable colonies of bees in confinement; sperm and embryo storage, nutritional substitutes; controlling the foraging of colonies, etc."
Brodschneider: "Are you still involved in some research?"
Page: "What I think is my final research paper is submitted for publication. I am one of several authors but I am very proud of my contribution. It is a paper about how you can take a large set of gene expression data and derive from it coordinated sets of genes that represent a network of interactions controlling a behavior or a physiological function."
Brodschneider: "Together with Harry Laidlaw you worked on bee breeding in the early 1980s. What has changed since then in the honey bee stock kept in the United States and in the breeding programs?"
Page: "I don't think much has changed at all with respect to commercial breeding programs. Queen producers are still primarily queen producers and not queen breeders. I think they do control their stock somewhat through their culling process when they select queen and drone mother colonies. The very few that do really breed bees, like Sue Cobey (who studied with Laidlaw and later became a bee breeder-geneticist at UC Davis and is now with Washington State University) and her New World Carniolans use traditional breeding methods: measure phenotypes, select parents, control matings, and get stock improvements. Sue is one of the few to use instrumental insemination to control mating. I suspect practices today are much like what has gone on since the beginning of agriculture in human societies. I think there is only so far you can go with these methods because there are constraints on what phenotypes you can 'squeeze' out of the honey bee genome. And there are serious social constraints, for example, if you breed too far for hygienic behavior you can get colonies that tear down all of the comb and don't raise brood. Or if you do like I did, breed colonies to collect too much pollen it is pathological because they plug up the brood nest with pollen. We have not yet seen modern molecular genetic tools provide stock improvement, though there has been some limited use of them for markers used in selection. There are severe obstacles due primarily to its social system. For example, if you genetically modify a queen or workers, larvae or adults, they will be detected by the other workers and eliminated. Changing social structure is complex."
Page described current beekeeping in the United States as "Adaptable and curious. It is amazing how quickly and how well the industry responds to the plethora of problems, old and new, that confront the industry. And they succeed because every commercial beekeeper I ever met was curious and was always experimenting to find better ways."
In other comments, Page said that the most urgent problems in beekeeping today involve "Varroa, varroa, varroa. We have to keep looking for better control and management methods. I have been surprised that researchers and the bee industry have done as well as they have to stay ahead of the potential total disaster that varroa can cause."
Resources:
- "Why Bees Are Artists and Engineers: Robert E. Page's New Book," July 30, 2020, Bug Squad blog, UC Agriculture and Natural Resources
- Rob Page's Newly Launched YouTube Channel: The Fascinating World of Bees," May 4, 2023, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology
- Honey Bee Geneticist Rob Page Named UC Davis Distinguished Professor, Jan. 8, 2018, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The link: https://youtube.com/@
"The impact of bees on our planet is immeasurable," he says. "Bees are responsible for the evolution of the vast array of brightly-coloured flowers and for engineering the niches of multitudes of plants, animals, and microbes. They've painted our landscapes with flowers through their pollination activities and have evolved the most complex societies to build and exploit the environment. The biology of the honey bee is one that reflects their role in transforming environments with their anatomical adaptations and a complex language that together function to harvest floral resources. A social system that includes a division of labor builds, defends, and provisions nests containing tens of thousands of individuals, only one of whom reproduces."
"This YouTube channel series presents fundamental biology, not in organizational layers, but wrapped around interesting themes and concepts, and in ways designed to explore and understand each concept," explained Page, who retired in 2019. "It examines the co-evolution of bees and flowering plants, bees as engineers of the environment, the evolution of sociality, the honey bee as a superorganism and how it evolves, and the mating behavior of the queen."
The content is derived from his book, The Art of the Bee: Shaping the Environment from Landscapes to Societies, (Oxford University Press, 2020).
His YouTube channel is divided into six segments:
Episode 1: “Darwin's Abominable Mystery”
Episode 2: “Floral Adaptations”
Episode 3: “Adaptations of Bees”
Episode 4: “Dance Language”
Episode 5: “Navigation”
Episode 6: “Time Scales of Change”
Environmental Engineers:
Episode 1: “Environmental Engineering”
Episode 2: “Niche Construction”
Episode 3: “Nest Defense in Niche Construction”
The Social Contract:
Episode 1: “Political Philosophy of Bees Social Contract”
Episode 2: “Complex Social Structures”
Episode 3: “Power and Will of Social Insects”
Episode 4: “Evolution of Altruism in Bees”
Episode 5: “Public Health and Bees”
Episode 6: “Honey Bee Public Works, Welfare Immigration”
Superorganisms:
Episode 1: “What Is a Superorganism?”
Episode 2: “Reproduction, Protection and Nutrition”
Episode 3: “Biogenic Law and Baers Law”
Episode 4: “Germ Plasm Theory”
Episode 5: “A Metaphor or an Entity”
How to Make a Superorganism:
Episode 1: “The Spirit of the Hive”
Episode 2: “Division of Labor”
Episode 3: “Colony Level Selection”
Episode 4: “Phenotypic Architecture”
Episode 5: “Phenotypic and Genetic Architectures”
Episode 6: “Bee Development”
Song of the Queen:
Episode 1: “Natural History and Castes”
Episode 2: “The Song Begins: Making a New Queen”
Episode 3: “Conditions that Stimulate Queen Rearing”
Episode 4: “Where Do Queens Mate?”
Episode 5: “How Do Queens Mate? How Many Times?”
Episode 6: “Polyandry and Sperm Use”
Page joined Arizona State University in 2004, after retiring as Professor Emeritus and Chair Emeritus, UC Davis Department of Entomology, to be founding director of the School of Life Sciences. He served as provost of Arizona State University (2013- 2015) and dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (2011-2013). His research on honey bee behavior and genetics appears in his publications Queen Rearing and Bee Breeding (1997, with Harry H.Laidlaw Jr. his doctoral research mentor at UC Davis and "the father of honey bee genetics"); The Spirit of the Hive, Harvard University Press (2013); and The Art of the Bee, Oxford University Press (2020). His 230-plus research papers have been cited more than 20,000 times.
Much of his research occurred at UC Davis. For 24 years, from 1989 to 2015, Page maintained a honey bee-breeding program, managed by bee breeder-geneticist Kim Fondrk. Their contributions include discovering a link between social behavior and maternal traits in bees. Their work was featured in a cover story in the journal Nature. In all, Nature featured his work on four covers from work mostly done at UC Davis.
Highly honored by his peers, the honey bee geneticist is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Brazilian Academy of Science, Leopoldina--the German National Academy of Science, and the California Academy of Sciences. His many awards include the Humboldt Research Prize, Fellow (elected) of the Entomological Society of America (ESA), and recipient of the both the Eastern and Western Apicultural Society Research Awards.
Page's UC Davis honors include:
- Thomas and Nina Leigh Distinguished Alumni Award (2018) from UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology
- UC Davis Distinguished Emeritus Professor (2019), one awarded annually, UC Davis Emeriti Association
- Exceptional Emeriti Faculty Award (2022), UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences
He most recently won the 2023 C. W. Woodworth Award, the highest honor that the Pacific Branch of ESA offers. “Dr. Page is a pioneering researcher in the field of evolutionary genetics and social behavior of honey bees, and a highly respected and quoted author, teacher and former administrator,” wrote nominator Steve Nadler, professor and chair of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology. Page is the 12th UC Davis recipient of the award, first presented in 1969. Laidlaw won the award in 1981. (See news story)
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Of the 14 awards, UC Riverside scored four; UC Davis, three; Washington State University, two; University of Arizona, two; Arizona State University, one; and USDA-ARS, two.
UC Davis-affiliated awards include two in the professional category, and one in the student category.
- Honey bee geneticist Robert E. Page Jr. won the top award, the C. W. Woodworth Award. (See news story). He is the 12th UC Davis entomologist to win the award, first presented in 1969. Previous UC Davis recipients:
1978: William Harry Lange Jr. (1912-2004)
1981: Harry Laidlaw Jr. (1907-2003)
1987: Robert Washino
1991: Thomas Leigh (1923-1993)
1998: Harry Kaya
2009: Charles Summers (1941-2021)
2010: Walter Leal
2011: Frank Zalom
2014: James R. Carey
2015: Thomas Scott
2020: Lynn Kimsey - Community ecologist Louie Yang won the Distinction in Student Mentoring Award, an award first presented in 2012. (See news story) He is the third UC Davis faculty member to receive the award. Previous UC Davis recipients:
Louie Yang, Distinction in Student Mentoring Award
2018: Jay Rosenheim
2020: Robert Kimsey - Research scholar Gary Ge of the UC Davis Research Scholars Program in Insect Biology, won the second annual Dr. Stephen Garczynski Undergraduate Research Scholarship. (See news story) Previous UC Davis recipient:
2022: Gwen Erdosh
In the United States: Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawai'i, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Washington, Wyoming
U.S. Territories: American Samoa, the Federated States of Micronesia, Guam, Johnston Atoll, Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Midway Islands, Wake Island
In Canada: Alberta, British Columbia, Northwest Territories, Saskatchewan, Yukon
In Mexico: Baja California, Baja California Sur, Sinaloa, Sonora
The complete list of winners is posted here.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
“Dr. Page is a pioneering researcher in the field of evolutionary genetics and social behavior of honey bees, and a highly respected and quoted author, teacher and former administrator,” wrote nominator Steve Nadler, professor and chair of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology.
Page is the 12th UC Davis recipient of the award, first presented in 1969. His mentor, and later colleague, Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. (for whom the UC Davis bee biology research facility is named), won the award in 1981.
The PBESA awards ceremony will take place at its meeting, April 2-5, in Seattle. The organization encompasses 11 Western states, and parts of Canada, Mexico and U.S. territories.
“One of Dr. Page's most salient contributions to science was to construct the first genomic map of the honey bee, which sparked a variety of pioneering contributions not only to insect biology but to genetics at large,” Nadler related. “It was the first genetic map of any social insect. He was the first to demonstrate that a significant amount of observed behavioral variation among honey bee workers is due to genotypic variation. In the 1990s, he and his students and colleagues isolated, characterized and validated the complementary sex determination gene of the honey bee; considered the most important paper yet published about the genetics of Hymenoptera. The journal Cell featured their work on its cover. In subsequent studies, he and his team published further research into the regulation of honey bee foraging, defensive and alarm behavior.”
A native of Bakersfield, Rob holds a bachelor's degree in entomology (1976), with a minor in chemistry, from San Jose State University. He obtained his doctorate in entomology (1980) from UC Davis; joined the UC Davis faculty in 1989; and chaired the Department of Entomology from 1999 to 2004. He gained UC Davis emeritus professor-chair status in 2004, the year that Arizona State University (ASU) recruited him to be the founding director of its School of Life Sciences. Page organized three departments—biology, microbiology and botany, totaling more than 600 faculty, graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and staff--into one unified school. Using his UC Davis experiences, he established the school as a platform for discovery in the biomedical, genomic and evolutionary and environmental sciences; and established ASU's world-class Social Insect Research Group and Honey Bee Research Facility.
Page's career at ASU led to a series of top-level administrative roles: founding director, School of Life Sciences (2004-2010), vice provost and dean, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (2011-2013) and university provost, 2014-2015.
Nadler praised Page's strategic vision, his leadership and his contributions to science. He built two modern apicultural labs (in Ohio and Arizona), major legacies that are centers of honey bee research and training. The Social Insect Research Group (SIRG) at ASU is regarded as “the best in the world,” according to the late E. O. Wilson. ASU Professor Bert Hoelldobler, in an ASU news release, declared Dr. Page as "the leading honey bee geneticist in the world. A number of now well-known scientists in the U.S. and Europe learned the ropes of sociogenetics in Rob's laboratory.”
While at UC Davis, Page worked closely with his doctoral research mentor, Harry H. Laidlaw Jr., the father of honey bee genetics, and together they published many significant research papers and the landmark book, “Queen Rearing and Bee Breeding” (Wicwas Press, 1998). It is considered the most important resource book for honey bee genetics, breeding, and queen rearing. Page is now in the process of updating it.
For 24 years, from 1989 to 2015, Page maintained a honey bee-breeding program, managed by bee breeder-geneticist Kim Fondrk. Their contributions include discovering a link between social behavior and maternal traits in bees. Their work was featured in a cover story in the journal Nature. In all, Nature featured his work on four covers from work mostly done at UC Davis.
A 2012 Fellow of the Entomological Society of America, Page has held national and international offices. He served as secretary, chair-elect, chair, subsection cb (apiculture and social insects) of ESA from 1986-1989; president of the North American Section, International Union for the Study of Social Insects, 1991; and a Council member, International Bee Research Association, 1995-2000.
- Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
- Awardee of the Alexander von Humboldt Senior Scientist Award (the Humboldt Prize - the highest honor given by the German government to foreign scientists)
- Foreign Member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences
- Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
- Elected to the Leopoldina - the German National Academy of Sciences (the longest continuing academy in the world)
- Fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin
- Fellow of the Entomological Society of America
- Awardee of the Carl Friedrich von Siemens Fellowship
- Fellow of the California Academy of Sciences
- Fellow, Carl Friedrich von Siemens Foundation, Munich, Germany, September 2017-August
- Thomas and Nina Leigh Distinguished Alumni Award from UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology
- James Creasman Award of Excellence (ASU Alumni Association)
- UC Davis Distinguished Emeritus Professor, one awarded annually
- Distinguished Emeritus Award, College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, one awarded annually
In his letter of support, colleague and research collaborator James R. Carey, distinguished professor of entomology at UC Davis, described Page as "one of the most gifted scientists, administrators, and teachers I have had the privilege to know in my 42 years in academia.”
Bee breeder-geneticist Susan Cobey of Washington State University, former manager of the Laidlaw facility, emphasized Page's importance to the bee breeding and beekeeping industry. Cobey, who has based her career on the Page-Laidlaw Closed Population Breeding, wrote that: “The beauty of this system is that it is practical and addresses the unique challenges of honey bee stock improvement. Queens mate in flight with numerous drones and selection is based upon complex behaviors at the colony level, influenced by the environmental. Hence, traditional animal breeding models do not apply well to honey bees.”
Nadler also noted that “Dr. Page was involved in genome mappings of bumble bees, parasitic wasps and two species of ants. His most recent work focuses on the genetic bases of individuality in honey bees; demonstrating genetic links between pollen and nectar collection, tactile and olfactory learning characteristics, and neuroendocrine function. This work provides the most detailed understanding to date of the molecular and genetic bases to task variation in a social insect colony.”
Nadler added: "Not surprisingly, Dr. Page humbly considers his most far-reaching and important accomplishment, the success of his mentees, including at least 25 graduate students and postdocs who are now faculty members at leading research institutions around the world."
Charles William Woodworth (1865-1940), is considered the founder of both the UC Berkeley and UC Davis departments of entomology. William Harry Lange Jr., (1912-2004) was the first UC Davis recipient of the Woodworth award (1978). Other recipients: Harry Laidlaw Jr., (1907-2003), 1981; Robert Washino, 1987; Thomas Leigh (1923-1993), 1991; Harry Kaya, 1998; Charles Summers, 1941-2021 (stationed at the UC Kearney Research and Extension throughout his career but a member of the UC Davis entomology faculty since 1992), 2009; Walter Leal, 2010; Frank Zalom, 2011; James R. Carey, 2014; Thomas Scott, 2015; and Lynn Kimsey, 2020.
The list of this year's PBESA recipients is posted here.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The occasion: the college's Award of Distinction dinner and ceremony, held Nov. 3 in the Activities and Recreation Center Ballroom.
Page, considered by his peers as the world's leading honey bee geneticist, traces his "bee biology roots" to UC Davis. He drew a standing ovation.
Page received his doctorate in entomology in 1980 from UC Davis, studying with Harry H. Laidlaw Jr., and went on to join the UC Davis Department of Entomology faculty in 1989 and chair the department from 1999 to 2004. He then transitioned to emeritus and was recruited by Arizona State University (ASU) to be the founding director of its School of Life Sciences. His career at ASU led to a series of top-level administrative roles: from founding director of the School of Life Sciences (2004-2010) to vice provost and dean, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (2011-2013) and then to University Provost, 2014-2015.
"Rob is a pioneering researcher in the field of evolutionary genetics and social behavior of honey bees, and a highly respected and quoted author, teacher and former administrator,” wrote nominator Steve Nadler, professor and chair of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology.
While at UC Davis, Page worked closely with Laidlaw, "the father of honey bee genetics." Together they published many significant research papers and the landmark book, “Queen Rearing and Bee Breeding” (Wicwas Press, 1998), considered the most important resource book for honey bee genetics, breeding, and queen rearing.
For 24 years, from 1989 to 2015, Page maintained a UC Davis honey bee-breeding program, managed by bee breeder-geneticist Kim Fondrk. Their contributions include discovering a link between social behavior and maternal traits in bees. Their work was featured in a cover story in the journal Nature. In all, Nature featured his work on four covers from work mostly done at UC Davis.
Since his retirement from UC Davis, Page has published 65 research papers, eight major reviews and two scholarly books, many using his UC Davis affiliation. He authored “The Spirit of the Hive: The Mechanisms of Social Evolution” (Harvard University Press, 2013) and the “Art of the Bee: Shaping the Environment from Landscapes to Societies” (Oxford University Press, 2020).
Now residing near Davis, Page continues to focus his research on honey bee behavior and population genetics, particularly the evolution of complex social behavior. His continuing academic activities bring credit to bee biology and UC Davis, Nadler said. “His large number of publications and citations continue to be an important component of the high national rating of our entomology department.”
To date, Page has published more than 250 research papers and articles, edited or authored five books, and is listed as a “highly-cited author” by the ISI Web of Knowledge, representing the top 1/2 of one percent of publishing scientists.
Page continues to work closely with UC Davis professors and students, offering advice, helping them with grants, and editing manuscripts. A few years ago, he held an international workshop at the Laidlaw facility. He teaches courses (including “The Social Contract: from Rousseau to the Honey Bee,” and “The Song of the Queen: Thrilling Tales of Honey Bee Mating Behavior”) for the UC Davis Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI).
“Not surprisingly, Dr. Page humbly considers his most far-reaching and important accomplishment, the success of his mentees, including at least 25 graduate students and postdocs who are now faculty members at leading research institutions around the world,” Nadler wrote. “He also built two modern apicultural labs (in Ohio and Arizona), major legacies that are centers of honey bee research and training. He has trained many hundreds of beekeepers. His public service now extends to working as a Fellow with the California Academy of Sciences.”
Among Page's many honors:
- Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
- Awardee of the Alexander von Humboldt Senior Scientist Award (the Humboldt Prize - the highest honor given by the German government to foreign scientists)
- Foreign Member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences
- Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
- Elected to the Leopoldina, the German National Academy of Sciences (the longest continuing academy in the world)
- Fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin
- Fellow of the Entomological Society of America
- Awardee of the Carl Friedrich von Siemens Fellowship
- Fellow of the California Academy of Sciences
- Fellow, Carl Friedrich von Siemens Foundation, Munich, Germany, September 2017-August 2018
- Thomas and Nina Leigh Distinguished Alumni Award from UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology
- James Creasman Award of Excellence (ASU Alumni Association)
- Regents Professor, Arizona State University
- UC Davis Distinguished Emeritus Professor
