The Bug Bowl, Purdue’s wildly popular, one-weekend-in-spring tribute to all things creepy and crawly, now has a year-round home. The Boiler Bug Barn opened its doors inside Smith Hall in January.

For some time, Purdue’s entomology department has been striving to connect with people in ways that extend beyond Bug Bowl, which attracts thousands of visitors to campus each year as part of the Spring Fest celebration.

“Bug Bowl has been a tremendous event for our department and for the university,” says entomology department head Steve Yaninek. “But that is just one weekend. Our efforts reach beyond events like Bug Bowl. We’re now working with teachers and other professional educators to promote science literacy by linking insects, informal education and K-12 classroom science standards in a novel program.”

The Boiler Bug Barn is actually entomologist Tom Turpin’s old laboratory, converted into a visitors’ center chock full of insect collections and unusual memorabilia such as turn-of-the-century teaching tools and a bee tree.

“The new center will give our science education clientele and the general public a physical location on campus for year-round contact to the program,” Yaninek says.

Turpin thinks individuals and groups alike will enjoy the Bug Barn.

“We get lots of requests throughout the year,” Turpin says. “Sometimes it’s from groups touring campus like 4-H or FFA, so we think it can be a benefit to student recruitment. But we also get people who come to campus with their children, or grandchildren, and ask to see the insect collections. So this is a place where we can display things we do during Bug Bowl.”

Visitors will see what Turpin calls the “Oh My! Insect Collection,” which includes insects such as the Goliath beetle, the world’s largest insect, and showy insects from Indiana and the world.

A five-foot section of a red oak tree occupies a corner of the Bug Barn. Turpin estimates the log to be older than the university itself, part of a tree that sprouted more than 150 years ago.

A quarter of the hollow log has been cut away, replaced by a sheet of glass that keeps several thousand very active bees safely inside the log. “This will also be an educational tool for our students, where they can observe and learn about honeybee behavior,” Turpin says.

The center is open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday.

Contact Turpin at turpin@purdue.edu