The Alumni Office is pleased to welcome Dr. Josephine (Jody) Johnson to campus on Tuesday, April 22 for a special alumni Earth Day event. Dr. Johnson has been engaged in a project in Tanzania in which honey bee hives are installed to deter migrating African elephants from raiding village croplands, thereby avoiding deadly human-elephant conflicts. She will discuss sustainability and her work on the project.
The Alumni Office is pleased to welcome Dr. Josephine (Jody) Johnson to campus on Tuesday, April 22 for a special alumni Earth Day event. Dr. Johnson has been engaged in a project in Tanzania in which honey bee hives are installed to deter migrating African elephants from raiding village croplands, thereby avoiding deadly human-elephant conflicts. She will discuss sustainability and her work on the project.
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2025 Alumni Earth Day Speaker Event:
About the Speaker
Dr. Josephine (Jody) Johnson has a PhD in toxicology and has spent the last four years conducting research at the US Department of Agriculture on novel compounds that kill or arrest the life cycle of Varroa destructor, a destructive parasitic mite that plagues honey bee colonies nationwide. Past research efforts have focused on pesticide effects, nutritional studies, and electrostatic interactions between bees and flowers. In the last five years, she has been and continues to be engaged in a project in Tanzania in which honey bee hives are installed to deter migrating African elephants from raiding village croplands, thereby avoiding deadly human-elephant conflicts. She has recently retired from teaching college classes in environmental science, chemistry, physical science, world pollinators, and the science of sustainability. She has spoken at conferences nationally and internationally, and currently maintains a personal apiary of 18 hives.
About the Presentation and the Tanzanian Elephant Foundation
Elephants (Loxodonta Africana) migrate along north-south and east-west routes in Tanzania, an east African country just south of the equator. As these animals migrate, they feed on trees, fruits, and crops such as tomatoes, corn, and melons, which might be the only source of income for a village. To avoid deadly conflicts between elephants and irate villagers, bee hive fences, occupied by the notoriously aggressive Africanized honey bees (Apis mellifera scutellata), are built along the edges of village croplands to deter elephants, who dislike these bees. The bee hive fences help to conserve elephants by avoiding human-elephant conflict. Other threats such as poaching imperil elephants. Sustainability will be discussed.