Non Technical Summary
Honey bees are the primary insect pollinator of ~100 crops grown in the US. The catastrophic flooding following Hurricane Helene in the southerna Appalanchains resulted in many beekeepers losing entire apiaries, leaving the local honey bee population decimated. Our goal is to help beekeepers in the region grow their colonies back by providing training that helps them raise new queens and thus enable them to split their colonies to grow their numbers back to pre-hurricane levels. To accomplish this we will hold numerous workshops on queen rearing and best-management practices to help increase colony survival. We will also sample colonies in affected and unaffected regions to see if the additional environmental stress of flooding has resulted in increased disease across the region. We expect beekeepers to quickly adopt these practices and facilitate their repopulation of the managed honey bee population in the area to better serve pollination demands by growers.

Classification

Knowledge Area (KA)	Subject of Investigation (SOI)	Field of Science (FOS)	Percent
807	3010	1130	100%

Knowledge Area
807 - Disaster Preparedness, Mitigation, Response, and Recovery;

Subject Of Investigation
3010 - Honey bees;

Field Of Science
1130 - Entomology and acarology;

Goals / Objectives
This is a proposal for a Rapid Response to Extreme Weather Events, specifically the historic flooding in the southern Appalachian region following hurricane Helene. The catastrophic damage to the area includes significant agricultural impacts, including crops and livestock. What is often neglected during these times are the ecosystem services that honey bees and other pollinators play in production agriculture. Beehives are often aggregated in apiaries near sources of water, but unfortunately this has made them susceptible to unexpected flood damage following torrential rains. While we are still assessing the losses of the managed honey bee population, what is clear is a significant need for beekeepers to grow back their stock. This can be accomplished by taking the surviving colonies and splitting them multiple times to create new colonies, but the significant limiting factor is having sufficient queens to repopulate the new colonies. Also critical is the need to determine the extent of pathogen outbreaks as a result of the environmental stressors. We aim to hold multiple workshops on queen rearing, free of charge for affected beekeepers, so that they will have the specialized equipment and training to raise sufficient queens to grow new colonies. We will also sample regional colonies to quantify any outbreaks of common diseases and provide BMPs for beekeepers. This in turn will enable the local beekeeping community to respond to the recent and unexpected losses, as well as be more sustainable and resilient to future perturbations to the managed honey bee population.

Project Methods
Objective 1: conduct queen-rearing workshopsIn collaboration with the NCSBA 'Born & Bred' program and the Clemson Apiculture and Pollinator Program, we will hold at least five in-person 1-day workshops to train beekeepers in affected areas on how to raise queens, with each capped at 50 participants. The process will be broken down into various steps and each thoroughly explained: (1) Understanding general queen biology, why and how new queens are produced; (2) What makes a good cell builder and how to set it up to maximize queen quality; (3) How to transfer <1-day-old larvae, laid by a queen into comb, to queen cup using the Doolittle method of grafting; (4) Placement of queen cells into a cell builder (several may be introduced together) and feeding the worker bees; (5) Identifying and selecting high quality queen cells once they are ready; (6) Setting up mating nucs and installing queen cells into the new units; (7) Managing queens once they emerge. There will be classroom presentations on each of the topics and then hands-on opportunities for the participants to practice these skills. The workshops will be timed accordingly so the participants will be able to take this skill back to their apiaries and immediately put it into practice. The NCSBA has already produced an excellent and extensive 43-page reference manual, which will be given to each participant so they can refer back to the lecture material if needed. Critically, the manual includes a convenient schedule calendar that follows the developmental biology of the queens so that beekeeper can track the progress of their queens.Objective 2: sample colonies for rapid pathogen testingThe prevalence of foulbrood (American and European) and Vairimorpha (Nosema) infections and the degree to which they are contributing to colony declines and losses are not systematically studied across the Carolinas with little analysis of how catastrophic storms influence pathogen distribution and intensity. Sampling for these pathogens will be widely distributed across both states (1) to determine the geographic distribution of these infectious diseases across the Carolinas, (2) to determine seasonal shifts of these infectious diseases, and (3) to compare prevalence of these pathogens in the areas affected by flooding from Helene to unaffected areas. We propose to collect 15 samples from 20 locations (300 samples in total) across the Carolinas through the 2025 season. Three sampling events will occur (late winter, spring nectar flow and late summer) with 5 samples/site/event Collection sites will be distributed evenly among the 5 major ecoregions (4 sites/ecoregion) which North and South Carolina have in common (coastal zone, Atlantic coastal plain, sandhills, piedmont, and blue ridge mountains). Because flooding from Helene mostly affected the western counties of the two states, this sampling methodology will enable us to compare areas that received significant storm precipitation and widespread flooding versus areas unaffected by the storm. Sampling will involve the collection of live worker bees for foulbrood and Vairimorpha testing. Vairimorpha spore counts will be quantified using light microscopy and hemocytometers. Samples of adult worker bees also will be submitted for PCR analysis to determine if foulbroods can be detected. Swab samples of honey bee larvae will be collected at each site for PCR analysis for foulbroods. Results will be compared among sites, seasons, and ecoregions, and between storm affected and unaffected areas.Objective 3: deliver intermediate BEES Academies for local population of coloniesBEES Academies were held for the first time in the late-summer and fall of 2019 with over 150 participants across three geographic locations (Mountains, Piedmont, and Coastal Plain). The advantage of these Academies is that they can be customized to provide specialized training for the targeted group of learners; the modular characteristic of the curriculum enables us to interchange prerecorded and live beekeeping lectures and topics as needed. Previous BEES Academies were intensive, in-person trainings of beekeepers over the course of 2 days. They are currently cover honey bee anatomy, division of labor and behavior, mating, diseases, Integrated Pest Management, advanced management techniques, pesticides, and honey and other hive products. They involve one and half days of interspersed prerecorded and live lectures with extensive notebooks in a classroom style meeting room. Each lecture is about 30-60 minutes long, and all are followed by a question and answer session. The final half day involves hands-on demonstrations and practice by participants to learn hive products, how to read pesticide labels, diseases under the microscope, nutrition and supplemental feeding, identification of native bees and techniques such as varroa mite monitoring and treatment. The academies culminate in the presentation of certificates of completion on the second day. BEES Academies will be offered three times (twice in NC and once in SC) at various regional centers in Cooperative Extension locations. We will target classes of 75-125 beekeepers in each Academy, but depending on the venue and location we may have smaller target audiences. We will add to and use our current BEES Academies to instruct participating beekeepers in how to better manage their colonies to assure successful overwintering and spring population build-up for the purposes of making spring splits to repopulate with local nucs. While we will continue to cover most of the topics as in previous offerings, we will specifically add new content to explain and demonstrate the various means by which to make successful splits and under what conditions. Importantly, we will add business planning and revenue management modules to the technical instruction, provided by instructors from the University, successful bee producers, and local business men and women. By learning and practicing the skills and management techniques taught in BEES Academies (e.g., winter feeding and varroa control), beekeepers will be able enter Spring with an excess population of honey bees to split into smaller colonies and sell. By increasing their colony populations and selling them locally, the greater beekeeper community in North and South Carolina and beyond will have a reduced need to purchase bees from other states and producers outside of the region.