She’s the Bee’s Knees

by Laura Breen Galante

Ella Pilacek, a senior at Oviedo High School, is one of the top 10 student scientists in the country, thanks to her buzzworthy research on honeybees.

She recently took seventh place in the Regeneron Science Talent Search, the oldest and most prestigious competition in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) for high school seniors. The national science fair, which attracts thousands of applicants, selects the top 300 projects in the country, then narrows that down to 40 finalists, who attend a weeklong convention in Washington, D.C., for two rounds of rigorous judging. Placing in the top 10 is an amazing achievement.

Ella’s project focused on conditioning honeybees based on the Pavlovian method. Her project took a conservation focus because she chose to train the bees to pollinate prosthechea cochleata, an endangered orchid native to Florida.

“Ivan Pavlov (the famed Russian physiologist) trained dogs to salivate at the sound of a bell,” she explains. “I’m doing the same thing but with honeybees. They are extending their proboscis, which is their equivalent to salivating, in response to the scent of an endangered orchid.”

A Busy Bee 

The goal was to try to encourage the bees to pollinate the orchid.

Honeybees are extremely important for the environment. It’s estimated that honeybees pollinate $15 billion worth of crops in the United States each year, including more than 130 types of fruits, nuts, and vegetables.

Ella spent four years on the project, including research and writing, and she utilized her family’s hives for the experiment. This past year she woke between 1:00 and 3:00 a.m. to collect about 80 bees from the hive, put them in the freezer for about 10 minutes to anesthetize them, and then brought them to school. In the lab, Ella would don them in bee harnesses (painter’s tape and half a straw, which she made the night before). The harnesses were used to keep the bees stable during testing, which had to be precise.

“I would take them to school to do the experimentation before school, at lunch, and during my research class, then after school until about five o’clock,” she says. “I’d go home, do the rest of my homework, and start the process of making bee harnesses all over again for the next day.”

The Sweet Smell of Success

In the lab, she used a pipette to waft a synthetic version of the orchid’s scent over the bees, then introduced the super solution, a sugar water to which the bees are naturally attracted. The bees paired the scent with the reward, and Ella saw an increase in extension of the proboscis  – which meant that, basically, the bees were drooling just like Pavlov’s dogs. 

From her individual bee research, Ella was able to scale things up to whole hive studies.

Her years of work with a total of more than 3,000 bees earned her a $70,000 scholarship, which she will use for her future academic pursuits. Emma is planning to attend college in Europe. While she acknowledges that the scholarship is very impactful, she adds that the Regeneron experience brought her more than financial assistance.

Ella says: “Just the opportunity to network and make connections with the other finalists and participate in the finalist week was part of the prize.”

We’re #1!

Seminole County Public Schools excels at preparing its students for STEM careers

Ella Pilacek’s award-winning study of honeybees is a perfect example of what students in our district are accomplishing in school.

“Ella’s success not only reflects her personal work ethic and achievement but also highlights the robust STEM education opportunities for students in Seminole County Public Schools,” says Katherine Crnkovich, SCPS communications officer.

In fact, SCPS is once again the top school district in Florida in preparing students for college STEM majors. According to the STEM Career Prep Index for fall 2023, Seminole County ranks number one due to the percentages of students in the district taking chemistry, physics, precalculus, and calculus.

These classes have been shown to help students who plan to major in a STEM field, such as engineering, meteorology, computer science, biology, chemistry, or architecture be better prepared for rigorous college STEM courses. Across the state, enrollment in physics has declined by 10 percent over the past two years, but in contrast, the number of SCPS students taking physics actually increased by six percent.

The district’s success may be due in part to its three physics buses, which travel to elementary schools to foster an interest in STEM fields in the younger students. Activities focus on making physics fun with hands-on, interactive experiments. The goal is to have every fourth and fifth grader spend time on the bus to show that any student can pursue a career in math or science. Kids love the bus, and it piques their interest in STEM topics.