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The Marvel universe isn't the only place where insects and other invertebrates have superpowers. Mason faculty, staff, and students are studying and explaining the many roles these creatures play on our planet, learning more about a bug's life—and the big world surrounding them—every step of the way. This edition of Around Mason offers a recap of some of those stories.

Faculty and students at 91���� are conducting impactful environmental research with the help of the Business for a Better World Center's Honey Bee Initiative.

Faculty, staff, and students from three units across Mason have worked together to create a new VR experience so elementary students can take a “field trip” to the Mason apiary and learn from an expert beekeeper.

An article in the Fairfax County Times explains the Honey Bee Initiative’s Hive Alive project.

For the past decade, Mason alum Germán Perilla, cofounder and director of the Honey Bee Initiative, has led Mason’s honey bee efforts.

This spring a small team of 91���� students used the Patriot Green Fund to enhance the diversity of the university’s Honey Bee Pollinator Garden. This garden, which sits outside of Roberts House on the Mason’s Fairfax Campus, serves as a biodiverse pollinator haven for the bees currently residing nearby in one of the Honey Bee Initiative’s apiaries.

A collaboration between the Honey Bee Initiative and Mason's new Forensic Science Research and Training Laboratory could yield critical advances in forensic science.

It wasn’t until 1972, during a United Nations conference in Stockholm, that the nations of the world formally announced what was already self-evident to most—human activity was detrimentally impacting the environment, and in turn, threatening our future prosperity. Nearly 50 years on, it seems that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Amissville, Virginia, just west of Warrenton, is about a 90-minute drive from Washington, D.C. Interstate 66 is the Achilles Heel of area commuters, but the silver lining is that it leads here—to this bucolic setting and to Hinson Ford Cider & Mead. Dennis Kelly (BA English 2012, MS Technology Management 2015), his wife Mary Graham, and business partner Dave Shiff opened Hinson Ford in September of 2018.