Franklin Pest Solutions Sponsors Two 2025 Bug Bowl Interns

LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Franklin Pest Solutions sponsored two interns, 20-year old Aiden Bemis and 22-year-old Colleen Murphy, at the 2025 Purdue University Bug Bowl.

Bemis, a Middlebury, Ind., native, is an accounting major at the Mitch Daniels School of Business. He credits the internship with re-sparking a fascination with what so many kids love about bugs while growing up in the Midwest.

“I grew up in a rural area, so I’ve grown up around farms and always played in the dirt,” Bemis said. “Some of my earliest memories are looking for pill-bugs – we called them Roly Poly’s --  in the woods under rocks and catching fireflies. As a child, I also loved looking for milkweed on the side of the road for monarch caterpillars as well as going to local honey farms and catching fireflies.”

Bugs and accounting might seem to be mutually exclusive but Bemis is going to continue to work in the entomology department next semester then hopes to pursue a Master of Science in Accountancy (MSA) program at Purdue and working in public accounting.

Twenty-two-year-old Colleen Murphy returned for a second year as a Bug Bowl intern. She is also an Indiana native, having grown up in Salem and will graduate this spring with a major in Insect Biology and a minor in Wildlife Science. Both she and Bemis enjoyed helping set up the Bug Bowl art fair and the colorful, imaginative drawings children from area elementary school submitted.

“ I love insects because they are everywhere in the world around us. My favorite insects are fungus weevils because they have an interesting, mottled pattern and are very cute,” Murphy said. Like Bemis, Murphy enjoyed playing outside and looking at and collecting bugs as a child. As a 10-year 4-H member, she submitted an insect collection every year and hopes to pursue a career that includes bug collections.

This is the fourth year Franklin Pest Solutions has sponsored Bug Bowl interns.

“We love encouraging and introducing an awareness and love of the insect world,” Janelle Iaccino, known as The Bug Girl with Franklin said. “We coexist in an exquisite way and bugs are so important to the world we live in. What many might not know is that pollinators like bees, butterflies, birds and beetles are responsible for one out of every three bites of food we eat. It’s pretty sobering and why learning, appreciating and protecting the insect world is so important.”

The Bug Bowl art show included more than 600 original local artist drawings of bugs where visitors tasted honey and participated in an array of vibrant interactive activities for the entire family that included petting bugs at a live bug zoo, visiting the Cockroach Colosseum and become familiar with their favorite insects. 

Bug Bowl started as a cockroach race more than 30 years ago by a Purdue entomology professor. Its popularity bloomed after a radio personality mentioned it, drawing more than 100 people to the event.  The event is part of the Purdue College of Agriculture Spring Fest each year.