A page I wrote on eXtension.org explaining the history, biology, and control of an important disease of honey bees.

Here is a blog I wrote about certified production in honey bees.

Writing original, engaging content that is conducive to reading and discovery on the web is a combination of literary creativity and understanding the format of the media. The format includes key words, web-centric organization, illustration, and clarity.

I have written the content for numerous pages on websites. My creative writing experience online primarily includes educational writing in biology, and blogging.

Editing for websites is also something I do regularly. Often, I am given content that is not optimized for the web. I can identify subtle changes that will make improvements that consider the online format.

Here are some links to pages and blog posts where I have written the text. I took many, but not all, of the photographs in the articles as well.

• The Bee Informed Partnership blog. beeinformed.org/author/michael-wilson/
• European Foulbrood: A Bacterial Disease Affecting Honey Bee Brood. eXtension.org
• Diagnostic Kits for American and European Foulbrood. eXtension.org
• Characters used in Identifying Bees eXtension.org
• Broodmapper: Honey Bee Development and Citizen Science. eXtension.org

Social networks help us find new information and connect us to people and organizations we are interested in listening to. Websites are about communication, and that requires a conversation.

Twitter and Facebook are two standard social networks I work with. Through the Facebook stream below, you can see where I have set up a fanpage for bees and beekeeping information through eXtension.org, beeinformed.org, and other news stories we dig up.

These streams can make a convenient way to create links on your site in addition to interacting with others on social networks.

Email marketing software, like Bronto.com, gives feedback on things like the number of people opening and clicking on links in your emails, conversion actions, and growth in contacts entered from your web-forms.

Online marketing software, like Bronto.com, helps automate web forms for sign-ups, lists, messages, opt-out buttons, and importantly offers numerous metrics. You can determine if your messaging is reaching your audience and if your messages cause actions like purchases or survey participation.

Here is the backend of a WordPress site where pages are laid out using a WYSIWYG editor and other features of the site are managed.

Content management systems (CMS) are web applications that store website content in a database and output the content with styled templates. This makes it easier for website administrators and non-technical contributors to maintain sites. My CMS of choice lately is WordPress, while I have additional experience in Joomla!, Drupal, MediaWiki, and Sharepoint.

WordPress, Joomla!, and Drupal use PHP scripting to call a database, usually MySQL. I have experience managing MySQL databases with phpMyAdmin on remote and local servers as well as modifying PHP code within open source CMS web applications.

Sites that I installed and maintained the CMS and its content.

• 2011 – present. beeinformed.org. The Bee Informed Partnership blog and homepage. A USDA-NIFA CAP project website. uses WordPress. http://beeinformed.org/
• 2011 – present. my4acres.com. My portfolio homepage. uses WordPress http://my4acres.com
• 2011 – present. rosecombapiaries.com. My beekeeping business website, uses WordPress http://rosecombapiaries.com/
• 2008 – present. bees.tennessee.edu. University of Tennessee, Bees and Beekeeping. Currently migrating to SharePoint. http://bees.tennessee.edu/
• 2007 – 2011. my4acres.com. Combined homepage, used Joomla!
• 2007 – present. acbeekeepers.org Anderson County Beekeepers Association. uses WordPress http://acbeekeepers.org/
• 2007 – 2009. thechapelonthehill.org. The Chapel on the Hill homepage. uses Joomla! http://thechapelonthehill.org/

Sites using a CMS where I am the content manager

• 2008 – present. extension.org/bee_health. A coordinated web-based outreach system for USDA programs with over 100 apiculture professionals from universities and USDA-ARS labs. http://www.extension.org/bee_health

Programming languages

Modern site layout is primarily influenced by the Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) computer language. However, other scripting is essential to site layout, and functioning, like PHP, HTML, and Javascript.

Figure 1. A CSS based menu I developed for midgepeet.utk.edu

I have detailed knowledge of CSS and HTML and a good functioning knowledge of PHP and Javascript. CSS can do things like the menu in Figure 1. Here, I developed a menu that when hovering over the fly images, their taxonomic family name appears. The viewer can then navigate to a page about that family. CSS has a limited number of selectors, properties, and values. However, they can be used in combinations that have the infinite application that you see on the web today.

For this website (my4acres.com), I developed a “child theme” that retains features of a default WordPress install (like being mobile web ready) and adds a custom look and feel. This is often the most effective way to design a WordPress site that will survive future upgrades, or when you simply want work efficiently.

Also important in site layout are the graphics and photos of the site. See the page “Header Art” for more graphics examples.

Screen shot of a 111 question survey I programed for the Managed Pollinator CAP.

Conducting surveys online has never been more accessible. However, as a survey becomes more complex, HTML, CSS, and Javascript coding can become important. In addition to programming requirements, marketing, institutional rules, and synthesis of results is required to conduct effective surveys.

I have helped with two large scale, online surveys. For a USDA-NIFA project, the Managed Pollinator CAP, I programed and distributed a 111 question survey in the online application InstantSurvey.

For another USDA-NIFA project, the Bee Informed Partnership, I helped with marketing their 2010 – 2011 Winter Loss Survey by setting up a WordPress website to act as a homepage and contain a web form for beekeepers to sign up and participate. I then used mass marketing email software to communicate with the 1,000′s of beekeepers whom participated. The results of this survey are soon to be published in the Journal of Apicultural Research.

* Figure 1.1 from my Master of Sciences thesis

Although you may not always think about statistics when thinking about graphic design, graphics are extremely important in statistics. Statistics software provides ways to illustrate data interpretation.

To generate these graphics, a working knowledge of the calculations behind the statistics is important. For example, inappropriate uses of ordination techniques will generate figures which are difficult to ascertain anything useful from.

I have taken three graduate level courses in statistics at the University of Tennessee. My software experience includes SAS and R. My experience has concentrated in linear mixed models in SAS and R for ordination, QTL mapping, and other genetic analysis.

* Figure 1.4 from my M.S. thesis.

Here are two works where I was required to take raw data tables and develop figures that interpret the data.

• Wilson, M. W. (2011). Bee visitation to crops and other flowers planted as bee food. Master’s thesis. University of Tennessee. **Abstract.
• A re-look at a QTL study for stinging behavior and body size in honey bees using R. A course final project for An. Sci. 675 (Statistical Genomics). Michael Wilson, Nov 19th, 2010. Instructor: Arnold Saxton, Data provided by: Greg Hunt

*Figure text

Figure 1.1: Bee visitation on one East Tennessee farm represented by nonmetric multidimensional scaling (NMDS) ordination. Unlabeled points represent transect observations. Labeled crosses represent bee category scores. Ellipses are the class factor of flower type and 95% confidence intervals of the standard deviation of their weighted averages. Permutation testing of flower type within day shows this factor is significant (P < 0.001). A vector fitted to the time of day within flower type is significant (P < 0.001). Thin plate regression splines further show the effect of time of day on the ordination using a generalized additive model with family = quasipoisson.

Figure 1.4: Bee visitation to squash and pumpkin across 10 East Tennessee farms represented by NMDS ordination, with environmental vectors and regression splines for time of day. Unlabeled points represent transect observations. Permutation testing within transect specified as strata shows the vectors are significant for date (P < 0.001), time of day (P = 0.018), and female flower ratio (P < 0.001).

** Thesis abstract:

Farms that require insect pollination and reside in diverse landscapes benefit from pollination by native bees. However, populations of native bees and honey bees are generally in decline and this threatens food production. Documentation of crop pollination as an ecosystem service is needed to identify potential impacts from declining bee populations. This study identifies communities of bees providing pollination and how they vary across different crops and environmental conditions. Managing landscapes to provide additional food sources for bees may improve the health of wild and managed bees. This study also evaluated the attractiveness of bees to selected species of plants that could be used to provide food sources.

In 2008-09, bee visitation was measured on 10 different crops among 12 farms in Tennessee. On one of these farms, visitation was observed for 24 different flower species that could be used for supplemental bee forage. Bees visiting flowers were organized within a classification scheme of 10 taxonomic groups. Environmental data for each observation was recorded including the type of flower, the date, time, location, farm and plot size, if the farm was organic or conventional, and the number and sex of flowers when appropriate.

Nonmetric multidimensional scaling and linear models revealed that native bees are important visitors to crop flowers, but their abundance and composition depend on the type of flower. Within a flower type, other environmental effects can shift the community composition. Plants selected for habitat enhancement can be chosen based on the similarity of the community of bees which utilize them as compared to crops.

Midgepeet.utk.edu is a site for a National Sciences Foundation grant to study the taxonomy of Diptera using molecular approaches. They needed a header with their grant title and graphics to pull you in. This is what I did for them. Click to zoom.

Thechapelonthehill.org is a church website that has pages for their chapel services and their nursery school. I designed two headers that would provide branding to separate these sections of their website. Click to zoom.