13th Annual Bee Forum: News From Inside Your Hive

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13th Annual Bee Forum: News From Inside Your Hive

Garfield Park Conservatory Alliance hosts an annual Bee Forum to join local beekeepers and beekeeping experts to discuss relevant topics in the world of beekeeping, in addition to building community with Chicagoland beekeepers. This year, we will host three separate online presentations in lieu of our traditional on-site gathering. GPCA is excited to have Dr. Kaira Wagoner, Dr. Dalial Freitak and Dr. Paul Siefert present on their latest research about honey bee hygiene and behavior. Come and learn about the latest news from inside your hive.

Your registration includes a link to the final live virtual presentation! Please note, these live presentations will not be recorded.

Schedule:

March 13 10:30am-12pm Dr. Kaira Wagoner – already presented 

March 20 10:30am-12pm Dr. Dalial Freitak – already presented

March 27 10:30am-12pm Dr. Paul Siefert

Cost for Final Session:

General Registration – $10

GPCA Member/Volunteer Registration – $8

Presenter Bios:

Dr. Paul Siefert

A newly developed video technique from within beehives has allowed scientists to record the complete development of a honey bee and provides fascinating methods that bees have for organizing their colony. In this wide ranging presentation Dr. Siefert will explain in details of what goes on in the bee hive, using stunning high resolution videos to show complete development of a honey bee in its hive, how honey bees build the comb, feed their larvae, heat and cool the cells, store nectar and pollen, cannibalise the brood, or clean each other, as well as pesticide influence on the behavior of nurse bees and brood.

Dr. Paul Siefert works at the Bee Research Institute of the Polytechnical Society, Goethe University Frankfurt where he has created a novel video technique that has enabled him to record the complete development of a honey bee in its hive for the first time. This technique is a key part of his investigations into the effects of neonicotinoids on the breeding behavior of honey bees in the hive in recent years.

Dr. Kaira Wagoner

Dr. Kaira Wagoner is a Research Scientist at the University of North Carolina Greensboro. Dr. Wagoner is interested in honey bee health and chemical communication, particularly as they relate to Varroa and the social immune mechanism hygienic behavior, the ability of adult honey bees to detect and remove unhealthy brood from the hive. Dr. Wagoner’s 2015 doctoral dissertation was an investigation of the relationships between common stressors, brood-signaling, hygienic behavior, and selective breeding in the honey bee. She has continued this work as a Post-Doctoral Fellow and Research Scientist in Greensboro North Carolina, and is currently using natural honey bee stress signals to develop novel tools to facilitate apiary management and improve selection of disease and Varroa-resistant honey bees. When not in the lab or apiary, Dr. Wagoner enjoys traveling, playing games (especially Catan, spades, and foosball), and spending time in the great outdoors with her husband and two nature-loving boys.

Dr. Dalial Freitak

Join us for a virtual beekeeping lecture with Dr. Dalial Freitak to find out how honeybees make their offspring more resistant against diseases. Honeybees get sick, just like every other animal on Earth. However, unlike other managed animals, bees don’t have preventative healthcare option such as vaccination. Dr. Freitak’s research has shown, that although honeybees lack antibodies, the classical carries of immunological memory, honeybee queens can “vaccinate” their offspring. In her talk Dr. Freitak will show the latest progress that has been made to take this knowledge and turn it into tangible innovation that will benefit bees and beekeepers.

Dalial is an Associate Professor at the Institute of Biology at Karl Franzens University of Graz, Austria. She has been studying insect immunity for over 15 years and her desire to understand how organisms adapt to stressors has led to paradigm shifting discovery of the underlying mechanisms behind immune priming in honeybees. She is currently leading the honeybee pathology lab in at the University and is teaching students about immunology and social insects. Outside of basic research, Dalial is a founding member and CSO of Dalan Animal Health, Inc. – a company pioneering the development of a first vaccine for honeybees.

Scholarships are available! Please fill out this Scholarship Application or contact Sara Cortes at scortes@garfieldpark.org for more information.

Accommodations: Autogenerated captioning is provided for all virtual programs. When you register for this event you will be asked to provide any accommodations requests including but not limited to: ASL interpretation, closed captioning, transcripts and more. If you have any questions or would like to request an additional accommodation, please contact Sara Cortes at scortes@garfieldpark.org, at least 72 hours prior to the event start.

Registration closes at 10:30am on March 27th.

Thank you to our event sponsors! Cook-DuPage Beekeepers Association, Northern Illinois Beekeepers Association, Lake County Beekeepers Association, and Racine-Kenosha Beekeepers Association