May 22, 2026
Even though her research on bees can get pretty complicated, her motivation isn’t: Paige just really, really loves bees.
“I just think bees are super cool,” Paige laughs. "I was thinking about going to med school when I first came to Nebraska, but in my heart, I knew I had this love for bees that I wanted to explore. So, during my freshman year, I got a job working at the Bee Lab.”
From there, Paige never looked back. Working under a graduate researcher in the Bee Lab, Paige started digging into her passion and seeing ways she could grow it into a career.
“The grad student at the time was doing a wild bee project similar to the one I'm doing today. I got to go out into the field with her to study wild bee populations, and that’s where I realized that I wanted to study bees for my career.”
Paige has been collecting bee data ever since. Her undivided love isn’t (just) because they’re cute — bees are crucial to our ecosystems, from our farmlands to the gardens we enjoy right here on campus.
“The focus of my research has been looking at how different landscape designs impact wild bees. Half is looking at landscapes on our campus and seeing how different spaces support our bees, and the other has been looking at creating specific strips of land around agricultural fields that could support more biodiversity.”
All this work, she says, is to help bees do what they do best: make our environment stronger.
“By increasing and supporting their habitats, we can really help our native bee species thrive in ways that nurture our overall ecosystems in Nebraska.”
Now in her fifth year at the Bee Lab, Paige couldn’t be more grateful for having a space that nurtured her own educational ecosystem.
“Being able to work in the lab for this long is incredible. My undergraduate research really allowed me to pin down which area I wanted to focus on and help me develop those skills. Every day I'm able to discover something new that I find fascinating, so I feel really lucky.”