Performing Department
Entomology
Non Technical Summary
Safeguarding honeybees and their pollination services is pivotal for human food production and ecossystem stability. Avoiding further unsustainable losses of honeybees as reported over the past decades depends on the development of new and inovative tools to monitor and manage bee health in the future. Such activities require an efficient research - industry nexus, where beekeepers are not only kept up to date of academic activities but are also able to get involved in collaborative research and outreach activities. To achieve this, we formed a California wide network of researchers and beekeepers and identified 16 different projects to develop new tools for better bee health management. Here we request funding to organise a conference with the following aims: 1. Connect beekeepers and researchers for an update of recently funded R&D activities. 2. Form working groups on proposed research activities such as a breeding program, a beekeeping school, novel medication development abd to coordinate future collaboartive activities beyond the conference. 3. Identify remaining gaps of knowledge to guide future research activities. 4. Setting up of a continous and up to date commuication platform between beekeepers and industry. Based on our objectives, we expect this meeting to have long lasting effects in maximizing the efficiency of our collaborative network and communication. Finally, our novel bee health management tools will not only increase the profitability of beekeeping with the potential to create new job opportunities, but will also impact pollination costs of crops and affordable food prices well beyond Californias borders
Animal Health Component
60%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
40%
Applied
60%
Developmental
0%
Goals / Objectives
Safeguarding honeybees and their pollination services is pivotal for human food production and ecosystem stability. Avoiding further unsustainable losses of honeybees, as reported over the past decades, depends on the development of new and inovative tools to monitor and manage bee health in the future. Such activities require an efficient research-industry nexus, where beekeepers are updated with academic activities and can get involved in collaborative research and outreach activities. To achieve this, we formed a California wide network of researchers and beekeepers and identified 16 different projects to develop new tools for better bee health management. Here, we request funding to organise a conference with the following aims: 1. Connect beekeepers and researchers to update them about our recently funded R&D activities. 2. Form working groups on proposed research activities such as a breeding program, a beekeeping school, and novel medication development and to coordinate future collaborative activities beyond the conference. 3. Identify remaining gaps of knowledge to guide future research activities. 4. Setting up a continuous and up-to-date commuication platform between beekeepers and industry. Based on our objectives, we expect this meeting to have long lasting effects and maximize the efficiency of our collaborative network and communication. Finally, our novel bee health management tools will not only increase the profitability of beekeeping with the potential to create new job opportunities, but will could also help decrease the pollination costs for crops and, and thereby, support affordable food prices and equity well beyond California's borders.
Project Methods
The proposed bee health meeting will guide our industry - research nexus over the coming years. The ongoing COVID pandemic substantially restricted our abilities for such crucial exchanges via in-person meetings because conferences, seminars, and workshops could not be organized. With the availability of vaccines and declining infection spreads, in person meetings will eventually become feasible and safe again and will be important to reconnect and revive our industry-research nexus. We plan to video record all workshops and have them available online for asynchronous viewing by stakeholders. The UCR Department of Entomology provides the necessary funding to employ a student for the duration of the conference to record and upload relevant content. However, we believe that an in-person meeting provides the strongest collaborative and interactive experience.We will use two approaches during our conference: First, we will use a classical setup with talks and presentations to inform participants about current activities such as the recently established California-wide MRPI bee health network and its activities. Second, we want to stimulate and expand participation and collaboration of participants. To achieve this, we will use a workshop-style approach in which participants will be asked during registration to select from different workshops offered, depending on their interest and expertise. These workshops are linked to research projects currnely run as part of the MRPI activities. Currently, we plan to offer the 5 workshops discussing a breeding program, remote sensing devices forbee helath, novel diases treatments, pesticide impacts on bee hives and teh formation of a Califionai wide beekeeper school.