Updates on Bee Nutrition Research from the OSU Honey Bee Lab
Bee nutrition is an important area of investigation to help not only improve individual bee health but also the overall colony performance. The Sagili Lab at Oregon State University has been steadily working towards understanding how bee nutrition can be an important factor for bee health and sustenance. The presentation will cover recent advances in bee nutrition research from the OSU Honey Bee Lab. Topics to be discussed will include forage nutritional quality and bee visitation preferences, impacts of fungicides on plant pollen nutritional quality, and preliminary findings on probiotic research.
Priya Chakrabarti earned her PhD in Zoology from the University of Calcutta in India, where she studied the effects of pesticides on wild Indian honey bees. Priya is an entomologist working on apiculture, pollination biology, insect physiology, insect nutrition, molecular ecology, insect neuroethology and ecotoxicology. Currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Oregon State University Sagili Honey Bee Lab – focusing on improving bee nutrition, bee health, and pollination services – she is also the President of the OSU Postdoctoral Association. A gold medalist in her Master’s, Priya has been the recipient of the prestigious INSPIRE Fellowship by the Department of Science & Technology (Government of India), the highly competitive Royal Society Newton International Fellowship by the Royal Society, and the prominent Newton-Bhaba PhD Placement Fellowship jointly by the governments of India and UK. In 2019, Priya received the OSU Phi Kappa Phi Postdoctoral Scientist Award and the OSU Postdoctoral Excellence Award. Recently in 2020, she was awarded the Excellence in Early Career Professional Award by the Pacific Branch of the Entomological Society of America. Priya has published several peer-reviewed scientific manuscripts, book chapters, and extension articles. She is an active participant in sharing research with various stakeholders across Oregon and North America. Apart from teaching and mentoring undergraduate and graduate students, Priya also interacts at daylong seminars with schoolchildren to teach honey bee biology and spread environmental and pollinator awareness.