Matt Boucher hand collects bees from blossoms in an orchard infested with fire blight. Boucher is capturing bees and other insects in an effort to find if they are transmitting fire blight bacteria. (Courtesy Heather Grab/Cornell University) Matt Boucher, a doctoral student at Cornell University, thinks insect transmission is one way fruit trees contract fire blight. So, he’s working to identify which bugs are responsible and, ultimately, to develop preventive management strategies to disrupt the process. His work is a continuation of research started in the early 1900s, then unaccountably abandoned in the 1930s, prior to World War II. Early […]