How Sammy Ramsey redefines the mission to save bees
The singing entomologist’s journey teaches us about the power of a unique perspective.
National Geographic Explorer Sammy Ramsey is a self-proclaimed “bundle of quirks and oddities.”
Standing tall in his “superhero pose” in his office at the University of Colorado Boulder, where he is an endowed assistant professor of entomology, he explains the life cycle of honey bees and their parasites. Maintaining this expansive body posture, he explains, helps him articulate better.
As an insect scientist, a passionate singer, and ardent believer that “you can’t be what you can’t see,” he’s dedicated his life to advancing science while carving out a path that makes room for his dynamic nature.
“There are times I have to remind myself that doesn’t always fit with people’s implicit bias about what a scientist looks like or sounds like or talks like,” he says. However, “I love that about myself.”
He embraces his inner entertainer. He’s uploaded videos of himself covering artists like the Black Pumas and singing to his original compositions, like one from the perspective of an emerging cicada. His boyfriend pointed out that his name also appears among the top three artificial intelligence search results for “famous entomologists”, alongside Edward O. Wilson and Thomas Eisner, known as the fathers of biodiversity and chemical ecology.
Ramsey’s most well-known work on the decline of honey bees has taken him globe trotting to understand how pollinator pandemics start and how they can be stopped.
Honey bees in particular, he says, “are the canaries in the coal mine. If something bad is happening to them, it’s happening at an even larger level to the rest of the population of pollinators.” And the more he talks about it, the more he feels few people have heard it put this way.
“There are so many reasons why we need to remain engaged with these creatures. They are underpinning our success as human beings.”
Ramsey has been shedding light on the fascinating world of honey bees by bringing science education, via song and lecture, to online platforms for years. It’s a contribution to the epic “reboot” he believes the world’s most active pollinators need in order to thrive.
A breakthrough discovery
In the 2024-2025 season, U.S. beekeepers reported losing 62% of their colonies. It is the highest recorded loss, and the decline is driven by a combination of poor nutrition, pesticides, and parasites. Honey bees’ ability to pollinate — bees are responsible for a massive portion of all the food humans consume — and their significant role in agricultural economies and biodiversity maintenance, isn’t inspiring enough momentum to protect them.
Bees, Ramsey explains, need a new narrative that reveals things about these organisms that aren’t as widely known.
From Ramsey’s perspective, scientists need to leave room for nuance, and in this case, even the possibility of reverting to coexistence.
Part of achieving this is participating in National Geographic’s “Secrets of the Bees” docu-series. As the scientific expert throughout the two-part program, executively-produced by National Geographic Explorer at Large James Cameron, Ramsey provides insights into never-before-filmed bee behavior.
“The great thing about this series is they take a group of animals we feel like we already know really well, and then they show them to us in a way that allows the information to be fresh, new,” he explains. “It will blow your mind,” he gushes.
Ramsey is about as close to insects as one can be. It’s not just work, it’s personal. He used to watch movies with his three-month-old moth, Shane, lying on his face. But there was a point early in his life when his fear of insects plagued him so badly he refused to go outside. He was terrified of recess as a kid, convinced that “the creepy crawlies” would claim him in the grass. On his worst nights, his father had to stalk and slay imaginary monsters wriggling across the carpet so Ramsey could finally close his eyes.
His parents intervened with a life-changing principle: “people fear what they don’t understand,” and guided him toward getting acquainted with bugs through books. It was a spark moment. His fear turned into fascination, and by age seven, he declared he would become an insect scientist.
When Ramsey graduated from reading about insects to watching them on television, he and his father would apply documentary-style curiosity to a backyard bug hunt. During a big cicada brood emergence, they would lure them by mimicking a mating call. The cicadas would trail down tree branches and climb onto Ramsey’s hands. He’d examine the winged invertebrate up close, until the creature caught on that it had been bamboozled.
Interspecies exchanges like this got Ramsey hooked on studying symbiosis. “It seemed really sweet to me that creatures work with each other, across different species,” he says.
He credits his parents for propelling his career forward. An aspiring scientist from rural Alabama, Ramsey’s father “never saw anyone that looked anything like him in the sciences,” he says. “It's incredible to me to exist in a space now, where I can be what my parents wish they could have been.” When his mother saw Ramsey in the “Secrets of the Bees” trailer, she cried.
Self-doubt has reared its head throughout Ramsey’s career. He calls it a gremlin. As he ascended through his doctoral program, he recalls feeling like a “glitch” in the system. “I was told, in no uncertain terms, that I simply did not belong,” by his advisors.
He was kicked out of his program because “he didn’t seem like doctoral material.” He used a nine-month hiatus to become proficient in Thai — it became an asset for his first research project in Thailand before he completed his Ph.D. in 2018.
Perhaps it was his unique perspective that led him to challenge science as it stood for half a century, and has remained the question he’s dedicated his attention to answering: what does the Varroa destructor parasite eat?
The Varroa destructor mite has been documented preying on honey bees since the 1950s, and for decades, scientists believed it was feasting on honey bee blood — until Ramsey looked closer.
He figured out the parasite’s appetite was more targeted: Like something out of a science fiction film, it latches to the underside of the bees’ abdomen, locates its fat body (something like a human liver), liquifies it, and gorges itself on that instead. It upended 50 years of scientific dogma and means the treatments used to protect the bees will need to change — something Ramsey has been tinkering with. “There are a lot of reasons to feel hopeful,” he shares. The data is still in progress, but it’s promising.
A key may lie in understanding the mites’ reproductive system. The mite lays massive eggs — up to 27% of the female’s body volume, every day. They do this by hijacking the bees’ egg yolk protein, giving them a huge leg up in overtaking the hive. Ramsey, who has imaged the process, says it looks “just like an HVAC tube,” and while it’s a clever system, it’s given away how dependent the mites are on the bees. “I think it’s actually possible we could eradicate the Varroa mite, and I'm working very hard on that now.” He uses the word “eradicate” carefully. From Ramsey’s perspective, scientists need to leave room for nuance, and in this case, even the possibility of reverting to coexistence.
The vast majority of parasitic relationships, he notes, started as a symbiotic one. “It might be possible to literally reverse it, and get to a point where these organisms are actually benefiting the creatures that they were once stealing from.”
Your Friendly Neighborhood Entomologist
In 2022, Ramsey was a recipient of a Wayfinder Award for leading a new age of exploration for honey bee parasites. Supported by the National Geographic Society, his current work involves building a genome project, which will serve as a global reference library for the pollinator world and is designed to get ahead of the next parasite pandemic. To do that, he’s collecting DNA and RNA across Southeast Asia — the only place in the world where all 11 honey bee species exist. It’s not just about sequencing the genomes of bees, he’s doing the same for their pathogens.
One possible outcome is identifying “immunity genes” in bee species that have developed natural resistance, and then with the help of technology, share these traits with more vulnerable bees. Ultimately, the goal is to create an open source library so beekeepers, farmers and the science community can access information to help their bee colonies survive.
Right now, Ramsey is also teaching in virtual classrooms in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East and South America. He’s reaching students through screens in 128 countries through a 50-episode crash course in biology. Through his own online presence, Ramsey is “Your Friendly Neighborhood Entomologist,” another space where he’s working to bridge the gap between science and the public. For all the advances he’s making in safeguarding a future for bees, he wants to be known for removing barriers to education and facilitating access.
“I have a very different way of looking at the world that causes me to ask different questions and land in different places. And I love that,” Ramsey says. “I’m doing everything that I can now to hold the door open for more people who are from different kinds of backgrounds, different ways of thinking, because that’s going to benefit the science. And it’s also going to be an amazing experience for them to get to be a part of something that they never thought they could be on the basis of who they’ve seen in this space historically.”
Thinking about that, Ramsey says, “gets me teary eyed. That’s what I want to be remembered for.”
ABOUT THE WRITER For the National Geographic Society: Natalie Hutchison is a Manager of Digital Content for the Society. She believes authentic storytelling wields power to connect people over the shared human experience. In her free time she turns to her paintbrush to create visual snapshots she hopes will inspire hope and empathy.
