Making It All Fit Together: Pollination, Reducing Pesticide Exposure, and Adding Bee Pasture
Keeping bees healthy in Oregon is a bit of a Jenga puzzle. While we all struggle to keep diseases and mites at bay, the success of our colonies is also the product of things that are beyond our control; flowers free of toxic pesticide residues and strong summer pollen and nectar flows. But healthy bees also result from you being paid properly (for pollination; so you can invest in people and equipment). Stringing these altogether is no mean feat. In this talk I will cover research in my lab that aims to thread the needle across all these factors.
The Symbiotic Relationship Between the Commercial and the Hobby Beekeeping Industry
Panel: Andony Melathopoulos, Moderator, with Max Kuhn, Jeremy Mitchell, Jason Rowan, Linda Zahl
The purpose of the panel is to discuss how hobby beekeeping and commercial beekeeping are reliant on each other. The audience will be encouraged to ask questions in writing through the moderator. Note cards will be available on the tables to write questions.
Andony Melathopoulos is an Associate Professor in Pollinator Health Extension in the Department of Horticulture at Oregon State University, which was the first such position in the US. He also sit on the Steering Committee of the Oregon Bee Project, which coordinates pollinator health work across state agencies, leads the Oregon Bee Atlas, and hosts a weekly podcast called PolliNation.