From the University of Florida Honey
Bee Research and Extension Laboratory
How University Research Laboratories are Funded
By: Jamie Ellis
January: Overview of the HBREL at UF
February: Honey Bee/Beekeeping Teaching Programs
March: Research on Honey Bees
April: Apiculture Extension (Part 1)
May: Apiculture Extension (Part 2)
June: Roles in a Typical Honey
Bee Lab
July: How Labs are Funded
August: The Lab’s Physical
Infrastructure
September: What it Take to Run a Laboratory Effectively
October: Professional Development
in the Lab
November: Members of the HBREL Team and What They Do
December: The HBREL’s Most
Notable Successes/Contributions to the Beekeeping Industry
I hope you have been enjoying the glimpse inside the honey bee academic world that my team and I have provided through this series of articles in Bee Culture. We have really enjoyed telling our story to you. By now, you should understand how honey bee laboratories at land grant institutions (LGUs) are structured, what research/teaching/extension are and how they contribute equally to the LGU mission. In this article, I am going to discuss the money side of things, i.e. how and why honey bee laboratories are funded.
Money is a boring topic to some and a fascinating topic to others. I tend to be a frugal and conservative spender (and an extreme budgeter!) in my personal life. In my professional life, I find money to be somewhat of a necessary evil. Everything we do at and through our laboratory costs money, and Amy Vu, Cameron Jack (my lab co-leaders) and I constantly have to secure funding to keep this laboratory moving forward and productive. It would be hard to write a series about how bee laboratories function without talking about how they are funded. It takes the one (money) to do the other (function).

Figure 1. Laboratory leaders need to own many of the same items beekeepers need to own to manage colonies for research/extension/
teaching purposes. How much of the equipment do you recognize in our storage room (A)? We also need to maintain active workshops and even comb storage facilities (the walk-in freezer in the background – B). We are expected to pay for almost all of these items. Photo: Jamie Ellis, UF/IFAS
What costs do bee laboratories have?
Why do we need funding in the first place? Well, we have to pay for much of what we do. I will outline the typical costs incurred by a laboratory. This list might be a surprise for many of you, as you may not have been aware these are costs that we have to pay to do the things we do.
1)Salaries – This is, by far, the greatest expense in any honey bee laboratory. Yes, universities cover the salaries of key personnel (usually for the laboratory leaders, called principal investigators (PIs) in academia). However, universities do not usually pay for hourly labor, research technicians, extension technicians, etc. Instead, the PIs have to pay this cost. This includes the take-home pay of these individuals, and their health care, retirement, etc. (i.e. the “fringe benefits”). Fringe benefits are the hidden cost of employing someone and they usually vary by the job title. For example, professors at the University of Florida (UF) have a fringe benefit rate of ~30%. That means it costs UF $30,000 of fringe to pay a professor a salary of $100,000 (totaling $130,000). At our laboratory, we have different job classifications, each with a different fringe rate. Hourly workers are ~7% fringe while research technicians are ~55% fringe. In the latter example, it costs $155,000 to pay a research technician $100,000, making them the most expensive laboratory members to employ. As a PI, I have to factor all of this into my yearly costs.
2)Materials and Supplies – UF defines these as items costing < $5,000. This includes ALL the expendables we use. This list is by no means exhaustive, but I wanted to provide you some basic examples: test tubes, Petri dishes, insect nests, personal protective equipment (gloves, lab coats, bee veils, bee suits, etc.), paper, tweezers, test chemicals, computers/printers/monitors, hives, bees, bee food, bee medication, hive stands, mowers, weed eaters, etc. (Figure 1). Essentially, this includes EVERYTHING we need in a laboratory. The PIs are expected to pay for all of it… and I mean all of it.

Figure 2. Take a look around the David J. Mendes Research Laboratory (A) in our new facility at the University of Florida. Or, have a look at the Florida Farm Bureau room in the building (B). This room houses our incubators and sample freezers. My team and I had to
pay for nearly everything you see that is not screwed to the floor (and even some things that are screwed to the floor) or part of the physical building. Fortunately, the Florida State Beekeepers Association, a number of independent beekeepers/beekeeper
organizations, the Florida state legislators and the University of Florida worked together to fund and construct the new honey bee
facility on campus. Now, it is up to me/my team to keep the facility stocked and running.
Photo: Jamie Ellis, UF/IFAS
3)Equipment (Figure 2) – UF defines equipment as items over $5,000. I have to pay for new incubators, microscopes, PCR machines, freezers, gel-docking stations, etc. This includes ALL equipment of any type that we need to use in our program. Not only that, but I have to pay for the maintenance, upkeep, calibration, etc. of all equipment. This is a yearly cost that I have to factor into my search for funding.
4)Vehicles (Figure 3) – I have to purchase any new vehicles required for our work. This includes flatbeds, trucks, fork lifts, etc. I also have to pay to maintain them (oil changes, new tires, new batteries, fix a transmission, etc.). Sometimes, a university will provide a vehicle to a faculty member upon hire. However, maintenance of that vehicle and subsequent purchase of new vehicles are expenses encumbered by the PI.

Figure 3. Did you know that laboratory leaders are responsible for purchasing their own new vehicles (A) and anything needed to manage apiary sites, such as this tractor and mower (B)? Faculty even have to pay maintenance/upkeep fees for their existing vehicles. Some universities will not let faculty have vehicles dedicated to their programs. Instead, faculty have to book vehicles through university motor pools. In this case, the faculty member still pays the cost associated with using the vehicle. Photo: Jamie Ellis, UF/IFAS
5)Travel – Think about the number of times you have seen honey bee scientists at meetings (Figure 4). These scientists have to pay all travel costs related to attending research meetings of any type (Apimondia, American Beekeeping Federation, Entomological Society of America, etc.), and extension meetings that occur in their home states. This includes purchasing gas and paying for hotels, conference registration, food costs, baggage fees, taxis/flights/trains/Uber/etc. Travel related to extension meetings outside of one’s own state are usually covered by the host beekeeping club. To put this in perspective: I have to cover the costs of attending research meetings (and the costs of my team members attending those meetings) and extension meetings in the state. When I speak to bee clubs outside Florida, the host club typically covers my associated travel costs. There are other types of travel as well, including trips to the field to conduct research. I have to secure funding to keep gas in the vehicles to make visits to the field possible.

Figure 4. Laboratory leaders from land grant
universities travel around the U.S. and world to talk about their programs, network with other laboratory leaders and train
beekeepers. In most cases, the laboratory leaders are required to pay all associated travel costs. Here, Amy Vu (right) and I are presenting at the 2023 annual meeting of the American Beekeeping Federation.
Photo: Serra Sowers, UF/IFAS
6)Publications – I explained in the March article that the final step of completing a research project is to publish it as a refereed manuscript in a scientific journal. Historically, these journals were kept alive by libraries (usually university libraries) that would have subscriptions to the journals or by individuals who would pay the journal for access to a given article. Thus, it was usually free for the scientist to publish their work in a journal. There were occasionally page charges for publishing in a given journal, but they were free more often than not. Now, many journals are moving to an online only or open access model. In this system, the author takes on the cost of publishing in the journal, with the journal then making access to the article free. Now, that cost is paid by PIs. I have seen journals have open access charges as low as $1,500/article and as high as $8,000/article. That means someone publishing 10 research papers a year would need $15,000-80,000 to publish those articles open access. This is getting to be a pretty substantial cost, especially for productive research laboratories.
7)Consultancy Services of Any Kind – There are times that PIs or their teams cannot do something that needs to be done related to their programming. As an example, maybe we are hosting a large extension event and need to publish 50+ page programs for all of the participants. Maybe we are performing molecular work and need multiple genes sequenced, or a particular analysis to be conducted. Maybe we are doing toxicology work and need pesticide residue analyses on a number of hive samples, but do not have the infrastructure to do this ourselves. When things like this occur, PIs have to pay for the services of other companies to perform the work.
This is just a sample of the major items that PIs have to cover every year. I know that money is said to be a root of all evil, but (unfortunately) it is very necessary to keep laboratories running smoothly. We simply cannot teach university students about bees, conduct bee health research and work with beekeepers to improve the sustainability of beekeeping without money. Poorly funded laboratories struggle to provide valuable services to beekeepers. Unfortunately, money also does not grow on trees. The best PIs are those who are able to find multiple sources of funds so that they can keep their research, teaching and extension programs humming. So, just where does that funding originate?
What the University Provides
In March, I gave a bit of an overview of how research is funded. I started that discussion by stating my errant belief, when young and outside of the university system, that the university is rolling in money, and that university administrators will pass that money directly to all professors who, in turn, would always have all the funding they will ever need to do all the work that they will ever do. This, of course, is not the case. In fact, this is not how it happens at all. A more accurate picture is that PIs are CEOs of small companies, and that they have to raise most of the money they need to keep their staff employed, the materials/supplies/equipment available and their business booming. That said, the university infrastructure makes the work of the CEOs possible, and the university is the primary “investor” in a PI’s laboratory. Here’s a list for how universities provide support to their faculty:
•Salary for the PI – Professors can be hired for any number of months/year the university desires. For example, I was hired as a 12-month faculty member when I was first employed at UF in 2006. This means that UF paid all 12 months of my salary each year. Now, I am a 9-month faculty member, meaning that UF pays nine months of my salary and I have to raise the other three months if I want to get paid those months. In academia, we refer to these extra months as “Summer salary” because those are the months that we do not get paid if we do not raise funds for salary. The growing trend in academia is that universities are moving away from 12-month appointments to 9 or 10-month appointments. This means that many professors you meet have to raise a good portion of their own salary if they want to get paid for they work they do each Summer. In the case of faculty working at LGUs, the salary paid by the university is provided through state tax dollars. Some faculty members have to raise all of their salaries, meaning their universities contribute no part of their salary at all. These are hard positions to have.
•Salary for Technicians – Before I was hired at UF, the university provided each PI with a full-time technician, usually a research technician, to support the PI’s program. That has nearly completely disappeared from LGUs across the country. It is far more common for universities not to provide any direct technical support for PIs. That means PIs have to raise money to pay research technicians they hire. Our lab at UF has had as many as 30 employees in the past. Amy, Cameron and I have to find money to support each one. We are fortunate that UF now funds a laboratory manager position for us at the bee laboratory. However, it is now far more common for universities not to provide direct technical support. Instead, PIs have to raise the money to pay for their own technical support.
•Salary for Staff Support – While universities may not provide salary for technical support, they do provide salary for staff support. For example, our laboratory is housed in the UF Entomology and Nematology Department. Our department has one human resources staff member, two secretaries, three individuals who work in our business office, two design specialists, an information technology specialist, a photographer/taxonomist, two grants specialists, two student coordinators and one individual who works in the supply office. I do not have to pay the salaries of these individuals, but they are still available to me/my team when we need their assistance. Beyond that, the university also provides staff outside the department. These individuals help with grant management, project compliance, vehicle fleet maintenance, safety issues, human resources, research farm management, etc. These staff members provide services across many departments and universities never seem to have enough of these incredibly valuable folks.
•Physical Infrastructure (Figure 5) – Universities build and maintain infrastructure for PIs. Such infrastructure includes office space, laboratories, classrooms, etc. Universities also pay utility bills, provide salaries to janitorial staff, provide maintenance when buildings need it, etc. This is a huge investment by the universities in the success of its PIs. Keep in mind, though, that universities own the infrastructure so they can dictate which PIs get which space. Productive faculty tend to get more space in which to work while less productive faculty may be moved to smaller spaces. Faculty often are required to complete space allocation reports yearly, essentially to defend their use of the space they are allocated.
•Start-up Funds – Universities provide faculty start-up funds when the new faculty are hired. This is negotiated when the university is actively recruiting a candidate chosen through the job application/interview/hiring process. Faculty who have large research appointments often are given larger start-up packages (research costs money!) than those given faculty with large teaching or extension appointments. New faculty have to use these funds almost like seed funds, with which they purchase the materials, supplies and equipment they need to get their laboratories up-and-running. Start-up funds are, essentially, a one-time cash investment made by the university to the PI’s new program. These funds are not recurring. When they run out, they are gone. Furthermore, some universities pay larger start-up packages than other universities do. I have heard of new faculty receiving $500,000+ to start their laboratories. I also have heard of faculty who have received only $30,000 in start-up funds. In the world of academic laboratories, $30,000 does not go very far.
•Competitive or Year-End Funds – Universities often have small pots of money that they may allocate to PIs as needed. This often happens through equipment grants, matching infrastructure grants, etc. If there is a matching requirement, it means the faculty member has to pay a certain portion of the cost. For example, imagine that I want to purchase a new machine that costs $20,000. I might get an equipment grant from UF, with that grant paying $10,000 if I agree to pay the remaining $10,000 (i.e. I “match” what the university provided).

Figure 5. Universities, usually through state appropriations or donations, build new facilities or renovate existing ones to support their faculty. The universities also cover any maintenance coses for the facilities and infrastructure. The Amy E. Lohman Apiculture Facility (back
building) and Gordon Clauss Teaching Pavilion (left – behind the tree) can be seen behind one of our research apiaries. Photo: Jamie Ellis, UF/IFAS
•USDA Hatch/Multi-State Funds – This is an interesting pot of money available exclusively to LGUs. Essentially, LGUs are a national, state, local partnership. Thus, the federal government, through the USDA, will give money through Hatch Projects, Multi-State projects, etc. to the university. In turn, the university then provides some of that money to PIs who manage Hatch or Multi-State projects. The money is usually given in proportion to what your academic appointment is. Let me give an example. I belong to the USDA Multi-State project NC1173. This is the national Multi-State project focused on honey bees. The USDA gives Multi-State funds to UF, and some of these funds trickle down to me every year. I get between $5,000-6,000 yearly to support my program. I have a 70% extension appointment so most of these funds go into an extension account to support my extension efforts. Also, some of the funds can only be used to attend the yearly Multi-State meeting (usually occurs in conjunction with one of our national beekeeper meetings). If you do not go to the meeting, you cannot use the funds. All universities spend this money differently. I know of other folks in the honey bee world who only get enough Multi-State money to attend the yearly meeting. Fortunately, UF gives some for programmatic support.
It is true that a given faculty member can be wildly successful without much support from their university. However, this is the exception rather than the rule. Successful faculty are often those who work at supportive institutions. The funding of each LGU in the U.S. is intimately tied to its respective state. Some states are managed better than others are. Some states are more supportive of higher education than others. Some states have larger budgets than others do. All of this, and more, affects what a given LGU can provide to its faculty across campus. Fortunately, Florida is prosperous and UF is well-positioned to support its faculty. The success of our honey bee lab at UF is partly due to the university’s investment in our program.
Funding Instruction
Teaching students costs money. This is true at the undergraduate level (folks pursuing an associates or bachelors degree) and at the graduate level (folks pursuing a masters, PhD, MD, etc.). Teaching undergraduates does not usually cost faculty exorbitant amounts of money. This is because the university provides the classroom/laboratory space needed by faculty (Figure 6). Universities also provide the teaching technologies (data projectors, computers, online infrastructure, etc.) needed to get information to the students. Thus, teaching undergraduate students usually only costs time and as noted, a faculty member’s time is paid (well, depending on the appointment) by the university.

Figure 6. The teaching classroom at the University of Florida Honey Bee Research and Extension Laboratory. Photo: Jamie Ellis, UF/IFAS
There are times when undergraduate instruction costs PIs money. For example, Cameron teaches a practical beekeeping course in which students build their own hives, install packages of bees and tend the colonies throughout the semester. The material costs associated with this are paid through student tuition and/or fees levied on the students when they take the courses. Some undergraduate courses are quite expensive. This is especially true of study abroad courses. As Cameron shared with you in the February issue, he and I co-lead two study abroad courses (Asian Apiculture and Apis Diversity) to Thailand every other year. There are certain costs associated with these trips, including costs for the attending students and for me/Cameron as instructors. These costs are aggregated and charged to the attending students as fees required of them when they register for the courses. Apart from these examples, the university does provide small teaching grants (usually <$10,000) to faculty on a competitive basis to create a new course, improve an existing one, etc.
While the cost to teach undergraduate students is low to the faculty member (though, not to the university), the cost of teaching graduate students is comparatively high. At UF, our graduate students receive stipends (i.e. a yearly salary) of ~$25,000/year, their tuition (~$15,000/year) covered, and their health care and other minor costs (~$5,000/year) covered. This works out to about $45,000-50,000 per student per year that someone has to pay. This does not even include the project supplies/materials/costs the student will need to conduct their research. This simply is the cost of having a student. Students pursuing MS degrees usually take two to three years to complete the degree, while students pursing PhDs can take three to five, or more, years to complete the degree. Thus, MS students can cost $100,000-150,000 to have, while PhD students can cost $150,000-250,000. Someone has to pay that cost. When discussing this with graduate students, I always tell them there are five ways their graduate program can be funded:
1)They can pay the cost themselves. We do not allow this in our department, and it was never common anyway. Most students seeking a graduate degree in a field of science do not pay the costs themselves.
2)The student can bring an assistantship with them. Exceptional prospective graduate students have a number of external funding opportunities they can pursue. For example, the National Science Foundation has a competitive Graduate Research Fellowship competition. A student can apply for this and, if awarded, take it with them to a university. This, and other fellowships like it, will pay the associated costs I mentioned prior for the student.
3)The department or university can pay the cost. This is usually done through competitive teaching assistantships. Our department has a number of assistantships (often three to five/year) for MS and PhD students. The university throws in a few additional ones (usually three to four/year) each year. Faculty have to nominate their incoming students for these assistantships, and a committee decides who is awarded. The students who are awarded these have all of the costs I outlined before covered by the assistantship. In return, they are expected to provide teaching assistant services for the department’s courses. For example, if a student working with honey bees is awarded one of these assistantships, they will be required to help manage the beekeeping courses we teach.
4)The faculty member can pay the costs. Faculty members can write the costs of graduate students into grants (more on this later). If the grants are awarded, the faculty member can advertise for and recruit one or multiple graduate students. The faculty member, then, would use the grant to pay the fees I mentioned earlier.
5)The cost of the student can be a combination of #3 and #4, where the department/university contributes some money and the faculty member contributes some money. These are called matching assistantships (i.e. the faculty is matching the contribution made by the department or university).
Graduate students are expensive and quite a financial commitment. Remember, faculty have to secure the funding (~$50,000/year for multiple years) for the entire time the student is projected to work on a given project. However, graduate students are definitely worth the investment. They are creative, energetic, tireless, hard-working, valuable members of any honey bee research laboratory. A number of regional and national honey bee groups (for example: The Foundation for the Preservation of Honey Bees) provide support for graduate students.
Funding Extension
Universities fund extension by providing salary for faculty and staff, infrastructure and associated travel support. I discussed much of this already, but I will add here that extension is a funding juggernaut. Remember, LGUs are mandated to offer extension programming to the citizens of their state. Thus, funding for this comes through the state legislature (i.e. from taxes) to the universities. This money is used to support state level extension specialists (for example: the bee scientists at the various LGUs) and county extension agents across each state.
Traditionally, extension resources and programs were offered free to participants. However, shrinking state/county budgets and diversion of funds away from extension have pushed extension specialists to charge individuals participating in a given program. In fact, many LGUs encourage (or maybe even mandate) their faculty to make their extension programming financially independent, or revenue generating. In other words, we have to charge participants to cover our costs and grow our programming. This may sound bad, but it really should not. PIs who bring in funding for extension via revenue enhancement are able to grow their extension program and offer more services to their clientele. Let me give you some examples of how this works.
Amy is the primary manager of the extension programs we offer out of our laboratory. Her salary is covered by UF. However, she currently has four employees: one who manages the UF/IFAS Master Beekeeper Program, one who manages our social media accounts (@ufhoneybeelab), one who manages our podcast (Two Bees in a Podcast) and one who manages all other extension activities. The university does not pay these folks’ salaries. Thus, we could not offer these services to beekeepers if we did not have a way to generate extension funds for the laboratory. How do we do this? Well, we have three programs that we charge individuals to use: the UF/IFAS Bee College (our two-day, in person, beekeeper training event – Figure 7), the UF/IFAS Master Beekeeper Program (completely online – Figure 8), and the beeLearning short courses (also completely online). Beekeepers have to pay to access or participate in these programs. We use the fees we collect to cover the costs associated with managing those programs and any extra funds are used to support the production of materials/activities for which we do not charge access. For example, our podcast is free to listeners. We provide free videos and documents on beekeeping through our laboratory website (www.ufhoneybee.com). We travel the state, country and world speaking at beekeeper meetings. All of these services (and a whole lot more) are made possible by the revenue generating aspects of our extension program.
On top of offering revenue-generating programming, we can also fund our extension efforts through financial donations (where folks/corporations/etc. donate funds to support the program) or competitive grants. We have been focusing heavily on generating grant support for our extension efforts. Grants are useful for two main reasons. First, they can be large sums of money (meaning we do not have to struggle to raise funds all the time) that last multiple years. Second, they can reduce the financial burden associated with charging for what we offer through our extension efforts. Just in the last year, Amy and colleagues secured >$700,000 in grant support for training beekeepers to ‘level up’ (move from hobbyist to commercial level) and train veterinarians about the new veterinary feed directive and how it affects beekeepers. The funding from these and other grants allows us to keep our extension programs cutting edge, available to beekeepers and constantly evolving.

Figure 8. The UF/IFAS Master Beekeeper program also generates revenue for extension
programming, leading to greater reach to beekeepers domestically and internationally. This is a screenshot from the online registration page that can be found at www.ufhoneybee.com.
Funding Research
In my March article about research at LGUs (Ellis, J. 2023. Research on honey bees. Bee Culture, 46-52. https://www.beeculture.com/research-on-honey-bees/), I wrote a summary about how the research component of laboratories is funded. I have copied information from that article and then add to it for greater clarity. From the March article:
(1) Competitive grants – This is a very common method used to fund research. A grant is a monetary award given by an agency to a scientist or group of scientists to conduct a specific series of research projects. To receive the award, the scientist had to develop a proposal, usually in response to a “request for applications” (RFA) made by the agency. For example, the USDA National Institute for Food and Agriculture (NIFA) has a specific funding program on pollinator health. They put out a RFA once a year. The RFA will include specific instructions on how to develop a proposal and what they want to fund. The scientist, in turn, will develop a proposal that aligns with the goals of NIFA outlined in the RFA. The proposal contains background information, hypotheses to be tested, methods the scientist plans to use to test the hypotheses, expected results, a budget, list of collaborators, letters of support, and a lot of other information required by the agency and the scientist’s host institution. Proposals are considerable work to develop, taking significant time, resources and energy.
The scientist(s) must submit the proposal by a specified deadline, at which time the sponsoring agency organizes a review panel of scientists that reviews the merits of many proposals, rank them and provides the rankings to agency staff. The staff then works their way down the ranked list, awarding funds until they run out of funds to award. The funding rate of proposals, especially among the federal granting agencies, is low, often <10%. Some of the best grant writers in my department write seven to eight proposals per year, only getting one to two of those funded. Even still, there are many sources of funding for honey bee research. Such funding agencies include USDA NIFA, National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, Project Apis m (PAm), USDA APHIS, etc.
(2) Contracts – A contract is when a company, individual, organization, etc. approaches a scientist about conducting very specific work that the organization wants conducted. For example, one of the beekeeping equipment supply companies may have developed a new type of pollen patty that they want tested by a scientist. Perhaps a wildflower seed company wants someone to test their new seed mixture to see how attractive it is to pollinators. A chemical company may have developed a new compound and want to know its impact on bees in the field.
In these and other similar cases, the scientist will develop a scope of work (SOW, a scaled down proposal) that includes the problem that will be addressed, how it will be tested and a budget. The scientist provides the SOW directly to the interested party who will determine whether or not to fund the research directly. Contracts usually are not competitive. A company/industry representative or individual approaches the scientist directly, asking them to perform the work and agreeing to fund them through a contract.
I will make a quick note here to share that for grants and contracts, money does not flow directly to the scientist. Instead, the funding agencies/individuals provide the money to the institution, which then enters a contractual agreement with the funding agency/individual to perform specified work as outlined in the SOW or research proposal. I share this to note that some beekeepers worry that contracts lead to nefarious work by the scientist (i.e. that the company/individual/etc. is “buying” services and favors from the scientist). This simply is not true. All work of this type is done through contracts mutually agreed upon by both parties, with the scientist’s institute (rather than the scientist themselves) being the responsible party and the receiver of the funds. There is significant scrutiny and oversight by the scientist’s home institution. Can there be abuse? Yes. Yet it is not nearly as common as some folks suspect.
(3) Unrestricted free gifts – This final way to receive money for research is, essentially, the donation route. Individuals, groups, businesses, etc. can make a monetary donation to a scientist’s program. I will stress that this money does not go to the scientist’s personal bank account. Instead, it goes through the university’s development office (fancy title for their fundraising arm) and routes to the scientist’s home department for their programmatic use. These donations can range from $100 to $1 million or more. Often, the larger donations can be used to create “endowed” positions. Endowed positions usually come in three types: endowed professor, endowed chair, eminent scholar, with the money needed to create each position being greater as you move up the chain. Endowment money will be safely invested by the university, with the funds generated from it yearly (usually about 4%) going to support the scientist’s research program. To illustrate this, a $1 million endowment will generate ~$40,000 for the scientist to use each year. Smaller donations are not used for endowments and, instead, are spent by the scientist however they see fit.
Why is this called an “unrestricted free gift”? This is a very important question, and the answer distinguishes this type of money source from those of a contract or grant. The “free gift” part means that the money was given to the scientist’s program (again, through the university) with no strings attached. The individual/company/group making the donation cannot demand anything in return. The scientist is not agreeing to conduct a specific research project as a condition of receiving the funds. The money is simply a donation made to support the scientist’s program however they see fit to use it (equipment, supplies, new colonies, staff salary, etc.). Endowments are the one exception to this as the donor can specify, in general terms, how they want the funding spent. For example, they may only want it to be used to support graduate student stipends, or work on honey bee disease/pest control.
I want to spend some time discussing how budgets for grants and contracts work. This was a steep learning curve for me when I arrived at UF. I also think it can be a source of mystery for beekeepers. Hopefully, I can demystify it a bit here.
PIs have to create, and vet, thorough budgets when developing grant and contract applications. We have to estimate how many and what type (hourly, technician, post doc, etc.) of people will work on the project. We also have to project how much time they will spend on the project. Then, we can request their salaries (salary + fringe benefits) on the grant. Let me give an example. For purposes of discussion, let us say that I am working on a project to control Varroa. I will need a post doc to work full-time on the project and I want to pay the post doc $50,000/year. The project is for three years. Post doc fringe at UF is ~10% so I need $55,000/year ($50,000 salary + $5,000 fringe) for three years to cover the post doc’s salary. Given I put 100% of the post doc’s time on the grant, they are required to spend 100% of their effort on the grant. Now imagine a similar scenario, but one in which the project only requires 50% of the post doc’s time. Now, I request $27,500 (50% of a post doc’s salary and fringe for the year) on the grant and have to find a second source of money to pay the other half of the post doc’s salary. Contractually, the post doc can only spend 50% of their time on the grant, since that is the time/salary we budgeted for it. I have to do this for everyone I think will work on the project. Furthermore, I have to budget annual raises for all personnel throughout the life of the project.
On top of that, I have to write material, supply and equipment costs into the grant. If the proposed project lasts five years, I have to anticipate everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) we will need to conduct the project successfully and budget for every item, factoring in inflation, in the grant. Additionally, I need to factor in my project costs associated with traveling to the field for research or attending scientific/beekeeper meetings where we discuss the research. All of that (flight, hotel, food, etc.) has to be budgeted and added to the proposal. Furthermore, I may need outside consultants to help with part of the work (for example – sequence some DNA for us). I have to get a quote from the consultant and add that to the budget. I also have to anticipate how many refereed papers may get published as a result of the work and even where I might publish them. That way, I can estimate the open access fees and add those to the grant. Honestly, developing a good budget is as difficult as having and articulating a good research project in the proposal. It truly is a lot of work.
Everything I discussed in the preceding paragraph is referred to as “direct costs”. Direct costs are those costs required to execute the project successfully. For the sake of discussion, let us say that the project I mentioned costs $100,000 to conduct. This includes salaries, travel, materials, supplies, equipment, publication costs, etc. If my project is funded by the granting agency, the money they award will come to my laboratory and I am contractually bound to use the money in the exact way, in the exact amounts and in the exact categories I described in the proposal. There is still one cost missing in this budget: the indirect cost. This is the part of a budget that gets people worked up into a frenzy, and it can be very difficult to explain to folks outside a university setting. However, I will do my best to explain it here so that you have some appreciation for why it is necessary.
Let us go back to my proposal example. My direct costs (those costs my team and I need to conduct a particular study) were $100,000, but they are not the only costs incurred by the university for conducting that research. Think about it. Someone outside my laboratory has to receive and deposit the money. Someone outside my laboratory has to pay the bills we incur when purchasing materials and supplies. Someone outside my laboratory has to manage human resource responsibilities with the folks I employ. Furthermore, the university is providing electricity, gas and water to my laboratory. They are changing the toilet paper in our bathrooms and paying janitors to keep our laboratory clean. Someone outside of my laboratory has to handle the waste we generate while conducting our research. The cost of these and items like them are referred to as indirect costs. They are not a direct cost to me for working on a grant funded project. However, they are a cost borne by the university for supporting my work on that project. With that in mind, the university is allowed to require me to charge indirect costs to the grant, and they will generally do it at the level that the granting agency allows. For example, the federal government allows a nearly 50% indirect cost rate. If I need $100,000 to conduct a research project funded by the federal government, I have to ask for $150,000 to do the work. $100,000 goes to my laboratory to conduct the project; $50,000 goes to the university to pay the indirect costs associated with my project.
Why do indirect costs make people antsy? Well, many funding agencies (especially grower groups, such as beekeeper organizations) only want to pay the costs of doing the project directly (the direct costs). They do not want to pay the university’s costs (the indirect costs) associated with doing the work. Remember, I just said that the university will charge an indirect cost on any project at the rate allowed by the granting agency. Some agencies, especially beekeeper groups, will not allow indirect costs to be charged to a grant. That is okay with some universities, but not others. For example, UF has calculated that it costs them ~12% of the direct costs to support a given research project. Thus, I cannot apply for funding from agencies with an indirect cost rate that is <12%. Regardless of how one feels about indirect costs, they are simply the price of doing business in the academic research world.
Conclusion
I am sorry if I got a little too much into the weeds when describing how LGU laboratories like mine are funded. I hope that you found this informative. I also hope that it inspired you to work with your local bee laboratory to see how you can be a funding advocate. I estimate that Amy, Cameron and I have to bring in >$500,000/year to keep our laboratory running smoothly and able to offer the services we provide to and for beekeepers. The best laboratories are those whose PIs are able to secure multiple funding streams. As much as I hate to say it, it really does take money to keep laboratories on the cutting edge of delivering services to beekeepers. Our honey bee team at UF has been fortunate/blessed to partner with a variety of funding agencies and donors. We try to be good stewards of those resources by helping beekeepers every way we can.