Speakers EAS 2013
West Chester, Pa.
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Jeremy Barnes - A beekeeper for 13 years, past President of the York County Beekeepers and author of the column 'Jeremy's Corner' that appears monthly in the Pennsylvania State Beekeepers' Association newsletter, Jeremy has been privileged to have gotten stung (both literally and figuratively) by honey bees in Kenya, Zimbabwe, South Africa, France, England, Costa Rica and the Caribbean. |
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Dr. Dewey M. Caron is a native of Bennington, VT and graduate of University of Vermont. Following a PhD in Entomology at Cornell University with Dr Roger Morse, he was an instructor in the Entomology Department at Cornell, later moving to the University of Maryland and then to University of Delaware. Currently Dewey is Emeritus Professor of Entomology & Wildlife Ecology, Univ. of Delaware and Affiliate Professor, Dept. of Horticulture, Oregon State University. Dr. Caron helped establish a MS program in Medical Entomology at Univ of Panama in 1982 and has returned numerous times to Panama, Central America, and most recently Bolivia, with grant funding for Sustainable Development. He was on the committee to bring the Master Beekeeper program to the Eastern Apicultural Society and returns this year as advisor. Dewey received the EAS Roger A. Morse Award for Teaching/Extension/Regulatory excellence with honey bees. |
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Dr. Miguel Corona is a Research Insect Physiologist at the Bee Research Laboratory, ARS, USDA. Miguel received his Bachelors of Science in Biology from the University of Guadalajara, Mexico and his Ph.D. in Biotechnology from the National University of Mexico. Dr. Corona performed a first postdoctoral stay at the University of Illinois, Urbana, studying the molecular mechanisms of longevity and division of labor in honey bees, and a second postdoc at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, exploring similar subjects in ants. Dr. Corona joined the Bee Research Laboratory in March 2011. His research program focuses on the effects of nutrition on the physiology and susceptibility to diseases in honey bees. |
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Dr. R. W. (Rob) Currie is a Professor of Entomology at the University of Manitoba (Canada). His research interests include:
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Billy Davis is an EAS Master Beekeeper, recipient of Virginia’s Langstroth Award for Excellence, and currently the EAS Director from Virginia. He is now working to develop a regional Queen Project, Virginia based and sanctioned by the Loudoun Beekeepers Association and the Virginia Beekeepers Association. Sixteen years ago Billy developed "Practical Beekeeping for Beginners", a formal nine week class, which now starts over 600 new beekeepers a year in northern Virginia. |
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Deb Delaney started her higher education as a Fine Art major. She began drawing and painting insects which led her then to pursue a degree in Natural Resources with an emphasis in Fine Art and Entomology. After graduating with a B.S. in Natural Resources from Oregon State University, Deb then took two years away from school to work for the U.S. Forest Service on Beetle studies, all the while expanding her home apiary to about 70 colonies. She interned with commercial queen breeders during the spring months to learn some of the industry techniques such as grafting, how to run mating nucs and make nucs for retail. In her graduate studies at Oregon State University in Environmental Science, Deb researched the effects of Coumaphos on drone honey bee sperm production and viability. She then went on for her doctorate in Entomology at Washington State University, looking at the genetic diversity of commercial honey bee populations in the United States. Her work to date is an extension of that doctoral study, with an emphasis on unmanaged honey bee populations. Deb is currently Professor Entomology & Wildlife Ecology at the University of Delaware, where she has four graduate students working on various aspects of pollinator health and productivity. |
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Vincent Dietemann entered the world of social insects through the ‘ant door’. After a PhD on the mechanisms regulating reproduction between queen and workers, he left the ant mound to enter the hive and investigate the same fundamental question in African honeybees. During this postdoctoral study he also developed an interest in the parasites of the honeybee, which brought him to focus, since his arrival at the Swiss Bee Research Center, on the varroa mite. Since 2008 he is involved in fundamental as well as applied research on the host-parasite interaction between the mite and the bee and in extension work to assist beekeepers in dealing with this plague.
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Jay Hosler is a biology professor at Juniata College as well as a cartoonist who makes comics about science and natural history. Hosler uses quirky plots and humor to engage readers about science. The Xeric Award-winning graphic novel Clan Apis is the biography of a honey bee and was selected for YALSA’s “2002 Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults.” In his second graphic novel, The Sandwalk Adventures, Charles Darwin discusses his theory of natural selection with two follicle mites living in his left eyebrow. A 2006 grant from the National Science Foundation made it possible for Dr. Hosler to develop a comic book textbook entitled Optical Allusions and test it in classrooms. The results from this study were published in CBE-Life Science Education and indicate that comics are an effective way to teach content and engage students who might be otherwise be resistant to learning about science. His latest book, Evolution: The Story of Life on Earth, is a 2011 Junior Library Guild selection, a nominee for YALSA's 2012 "Great Graphic Novels for Teens," and has been included in the Texas Library Association's “Maverick Graphic Novel Reading List. |
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Katie Lee runs the Midwest Honey Bee Tech-Transfer Team based out of the University of Minnesota and supported by the Bee Informed Partnership (beeinformed.org). She works with commercial migratory beekeepers in North Dakota and Minnesota to monitor pest and disease levels and develop best management practices. Katie started the California Tech-Transfer Team in 2010 by working with bee breeders in Northern California to sample for pests and diseases, and testing for hygienic behavior. She received both a BS in Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior and a MS in Entomology from the University of Minnesota. Her introduction to honey bees through a class on social insects with Dr. Marla Spivak. Katie worked for Marla's Bee Lab the following summer and has been enthralled with bees ever since. Her main interests are bee breeding, Varroa, disease ecology, and extension work |
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Wyatt A. Mangum (Ph.D.) is an internationally-known, top-bar hive beekeeper. His long career began at age 10; by the time he was in high school, he had 125 frame hives and was producing honey by the ton. In 1986, this life-long beekeeper had switched to top-bar hives long before most other beekeepers knew about them. Dr. Mangum built up a 200 top-bar hive operation for pollination of cucumber fields in North Carolina. He now designs “practical” beekeeping equipment based on his research with observation hives, to be the equipment works from the bees’ perspective. Wyatt also specializes in the photography of bee behavior under difficult or delicate conditions, The most stunning pictures of rarely-observed honey bee activities may be found in his book Top-Bar Hive Beekeeping: Wisdom and Pleasure Combined. |
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Bill Mares is a former journalist, legislator and teacher, and author or co-author of 12 books including Bees Besieged. He has kept bees in Vermont for almost forty years. He has been president of the Vermont Beekeepers Association and of the Eastern Apicultural Society. In the last seven years, over 600 people have taken his basic beekeeping class. Bill Is now co-chair of the EAS Education Committee. Under the auspices of the non-profit Food 4 Farmers, Mares and Dewey Caron are building a web-based project to teach beekeeping to coffee farmers in Latin America. |
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Buddy Marterre is a Past President of the Forsyth County Beekeepers Association (FCBA). He is a Past Director, 2nd Vice President and Membership Secretary of the North Carolina Beekeepers Association (NCSBA), among other offices.
He is the lead author and instigator of Certified Naturally Grown’s Natural Beekeeping Standards. He has taught bee school to over 600 students in his county since developing the FCBA curriculum as the FCBA Bee School Chairman since 2004. He is both an NCSBA Master Beekeeper and an EAS Master Beekeeper. Buddy has kept bees since 2003, has had as many as 16 colonies and rears his own queens on a small scale. He enjoys studying divinity, keeping turtles and chickens, woodworking, nature photography, biking, and practicing surgery and palliative medicine when he's not with his bees.
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Warren Miller has managed honey bees since 1987 when he started with three colonies. He quickly built up to a dozen colonies and maintained that number until 1999 when he started to experiment with raising a few queens. That is when Warren decided to no longer fall for the pharmaceutical hype that runs wild across the United States in every aspect of our life. Warren vowed to never buy another Apistan strip again and he has maintained around 75 colonies since that time. Warren also is an avid queen breeder and has maintained a stock of chemical free bees for more than a decade. Warren will share the steps in his path to chemical free beekeeping and will convince you it is much easier than you think. Warren is also a past President of the Pennsylvania State Beekeepers Association. |
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Dr. Elliud Muli is on the faculty of South Eastern University College (SEUCO) and the International Center of Insect Parisitology and Ecology in Kenya. The honeybee is native to Africa and beekeeping has been practiced since time immemorial. Bees and their products are significant to many sectors of the population for income, health, and cultural value.
Dr. Muli has been involved in myriad beekeeping projects in East Africa (Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Sudan & Ethiopia), Madagascar; North Africa (Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Tunisia, Egypt & Libya) and Near East (Yemen) and has presented papers in several national, regional and international conferences. His current research work is on ‘Pollinator Health in East Africa’ in collaboration with Penn State University (USA). Dr. Muli is an integral part of the successful partnership to implement a program of solar wax melter /beeswax exchange between our two countries.
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Dr. Jeff Pettis - As research leader of the USDA Agricultural Research Service, Beltsville, MD, Dr. Pettis leads a team effort to improve colony health by limiting the impact of pests and diseases on honey bee colonies. His research areas include; integrated pest management (IPM) techniques to reduce the impacts of parasitic mites and disease, effects of pesticides and pathogens on queen health and longevity, host-parasite relationships and bee behavior. Dr. Pettis serves on several international committees concerning bee health and is frequently interviewed by the media for his opinions on worldwide pollinator declines. Dr. Pettis received an undergraduate and MS degree from the University of Georgia and his doctoral degree in Entomology from Texas A&M University in 1992. |
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AdamSchreiber has been keeping bees for the past four years in Philadelphia. He served for one year as Secretary and two years as President of the Philadelphia Beekeepers Guild. With a background in teaching, Adam has taught and lectured at many beekeeping events including the Guild's Beginners Course, The Philadelphia Honey Festival and most recently at the American Beekeeping Federation's annual seminar in Hershey. Adam has been using natural cell size and treatment-free management techniques since he started keeping bees. |
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Dr. Thomas D. Seeley is a Professor in the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior at Cornell University, where he teaches courses in animal behavior and does research on the functional organization of honey bee colonies. He grew up in Ithaca, New York and began keeping and studying bees while a high school student, when he brought home a swarm of bees in a wooden box. He left home to study at Dartmouth College in 1970, but returned to Ithaca each summer to work for Dr. Roger A. Morse at the Dyce Laboratory for Honey Bee Studies at Cornell University, where he learned the craft of beekeeping and began probing the inner workings of the honey bee colony. Thoroughly intrigued by the smooth functioning of bee colonies, he went on to graduate school at Harvard University where he studied under two ant men (Drs. Bert Hölldobler and Edward O. Wilson), began his research on bees in earnest, and earned his Ph.D. in 1978. After teaching at Yale University for six years, he worked his way home to Ithaca/Cornell in 1986, where he has been ever since. In recognition of his scientific work, he has received the Senior Scientist Prize of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, and been elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Perhaps his most enduring honor is to have had a species of bee named after him: Neocorynurella seeleyi! His research focuses on the behavior, ecology, and social life of honey bees and has been summarized in three books: Honeybee Ecology (1985, Princeton University Press), The Wisdom of the Hive (1995, Harvard University Press), and Honeybee Democracy (2010, Princeton University Press). |
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Brian Snyder has been executive director of Pennsylvania Association of Sustainable Agriculture (PASA) since 2001. He is originally from the state of Indiana where both of his grandfathers had been dairy farmers, and his family operated a purebred hog operation on a small farm. Brian holds two masters degrees from Harvard University (Theological Studies) and the Isenberg School of Management at UMass/Amherst (Business Administration). In addition to writing and speaking in a number of venues on the subject of sustainable agriculture, he also serves on related boards, including the Pennsylvania State Council of Farm Organizations (vice president). He also serves in an advisory capacity for the Pennsylvania Dairy Task Force and the School of Hospitality at the Penn College of Technology in Williamsport, PA. In his "spare" time, Brian greatly enjoys managing a very large garden and a small flock of heritage breed sheep in Centre Hall, where his lives with his wife Paula and daughters Kerry and Kayla. |
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Andrew G. Stephenson is a Distinguished Professor of Biology and a plant population biologist at The Pennsylvania State University. He earned his B.A. degree (cum laude, 1973) from Miami University and M.S. (1976) and Ph.D. (1978) from The University of Michigan. His current research centers on three interrelated topics: plasticity in self-incompatibility systems and its implications for the evolution of plant mating systems, the effects of inbreeding on the male function of plants (pollen production, pollen germination, and pollen tube growth), and the interrelationships among inbreeding, herbivory, and pathogen transmission in plants. At Penn State he has won the highest award for research in the Life and Health Sciences (The Faculty Scholars Medal) and the highest award for Teaching (The George W. Atherton Award). |
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Doug Tallamy is Professor and Chair of the Department of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology and director of the Center for Managed Ecosystems at the University of Delaware where he has authored 78 research articles and has taught Insect Taxonomy, Behavioral Ecology, and other courses for 31 years. Chief among his research goals is to better understand the many ways insects interact with plants and how such interactions determine the diversity of animal communities. His book “Bringing Nature Home; How Native Plants Sustain Wildlife in Our Gardens” was published by Timber Press in 2007 and was awarded the 2008 silver medal by the Garden Writer’s Association. Doug was awarded the Garden Club of America Margaret Douglas Medal for Conservation in 2013 |
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Dr. David Tarpy is an Associate Professor of Entomology and the Extension Apiculturist at North Carolina State University since 2003, after receiving a BS from Hobart College, an MS from Bucknell University (advisor: David Fletcher), a Ph.D. from the University of California at Davis (advisor: Rob Page), and a postdoctoral fellowship at Cornell University (advisor: Tom Seeley).
As Extension Apiculturist, he maintains a web site dedicated to disseminating information about honey bees and their management, spearheads extension projects such as the Beekeeper Cost-sharing program that enabled hundreds of new beekeepers, and launched the online learning community, Beekeeper Education & Engagement System (BEES). His research interests focus on techniques – such as field manipulations, behavioral observation, instrumental insemination, and molecular genetics – to better improve the overall health of queens and their colonies. Specific research projects include understanding the effect of the polyandrous mating strategy on colony disease resistance, determining the underlying factors of Colony Collapse Disorder, and using molecular methods to determine the genetic structure within honey bee colonies. Recently, his lab group has focused on the reproductive potential of commercially produced queens, testing their genetic diversity and mating success in an effort to improve queen quality. |
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Helen Thompson leads the Environmental Risk Team, in the Food and Environmental Safety Programme at Food & Environmental Research Agency (Fera) in the UK. The team comprises 50 scientists assessing and managing the risks posed to the environment from chemical pollutants and contaminants. Helen gained her PhD in 1988 from Reading University, UK. She joined Fera in 1988 as an environmental biochemist but has also trained in honeybee disease diagnosis and beekeeping with 4 years in the National Bee Unit at Fera. Helen undertakes research for UK government and for industry on the impacts of pesticides on terrestrial wildlife including honeybees and has expertise in regulatory laboratory, semi-field and field studies. Recent projects on honeybees have included assessments of the impacts of synergism between fungicides and insecticides, the role of guttation as a route of exposure and the interpretation of honeybee brood studies. She is also currently co-supervising a PhD student looking at the immune effects of pesticides on honeybees and bumble bees. Helen has over 75 peer reviewed publications in the area of terrestrial ecotoxicology and has been chair of the ICPBR Bees and Pesticides working group since 2011. |
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Mark L. Winston is that rare individual, a scientist who can speak eloquently to the public. Recognized as the world’s leading expert on bees and pollination, Dr. Winston has had a distinguished career researching, teaching, writing and commenting on bees and agriculture, environmental issues and science policy. He currently directs Simon Fraser University's Centre for Dialogue, teaches in the Banff Centre's Science Communication program, and consults widely on utilizing dialogue to develop leadership and communication skills, focus on strategic planning, inspire organizational change, and thoughtfully engage public audiences with controversial issues. Winston’s work has appeared in numerous books, commentary columns, and frequently on radio and television. |
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Wanyi Zhu is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Entomology and has a dual degree in the Operations Research program at the Pennsylvania State University. Her research interests focus on interdisciplinary approaches to investigate the causes of honey bee colony decline. She has conducted laboratory and field experiments to examine impacts of common agricultural pesticides on larva, queen, and adult honey bee health. She has developed a deterministic population model to understand the dynamics of honey bee colony in response to multiple stressors. She also developed a web-based decision support system for honey bee colony management. She is the recipient of Foundation Scholar for the Preservation of Honey Bees and Graham Endowed Fellowship Award. |
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