Recipient Organization
MICHIGAN STATE UNIV
(N/A)
EAST LANSING,MI 48824
Performing Department
ENTOMOLOGY
Non Technical Summary
Honey bees are food producing animals that are essential to US agriculture. Historically veterinarians have not been involved in honey bee care in the US, but in 2017 new federal regulations required the involvement of veterinarians for beekeepers to obtain antibiotics. Unfortunately, very few veterinarians are trained in honey bee medicine and are willing to work with beekeepers. Not only does this mean that beekeepers struggle to find treatments for their animals, but it also means that honey bees do not receive the same standard of care as other food-producing livestock. Currently, honey bees struggle with high rates of bacterial disease, parasite pressure, and nutritional issues - all aspects that could benefit from veterinary involvement. Our project aims to educate veterinarians in honey bee medicine through a tiered approach. We will create an online course in honey bee medicine that can be used by both veterinary medicine students and for continuing education credits for currently practicing veterinarians. We will provide hands-on training for both students and currently practicing veterinarians to learn honey bee handling and diagnostics, and we will develop an externship program so that veterinary medicine students can receive real world experience. This project has the potential to improve the health and care of an essential food producing animal, reduce the spread of disease to native bee populations, improve the sustainability of beekeeping operations, and provide additional income streams for veterinarians in rural areas who are willing to expand their practices to include beekeeping clients.
Animal Health Component
(N/A)
Research Effort Categories
Basic
(N/A)
Applied
(N/A)
Developmental
(N/A)
Goals / Objectives
The main goal of this project is to improve the health of honey bees by increasing access to veterinarians trained in honey bee medicine. We will create a cohort of veterinarians trained in honey bee medicine who will be able to take on beekeeping clients, adding an income stream to their businesses. The involvement of veterinarians in honey bee health has the potential to improve numerous aspects of honey bee husbandry, from parasite control to nutrition. Currently, however, veterinarians in the US do not receive training in honey bee care and are reluctant to work with beekeepers. This lack of trained veterinarians has resulted in beekeepers using old stocks of antibiotics or purchasing antibiotics from other countries, and many beekeepers are using antibiotics without any oversight or guidance. Even worse, many honey bee colonies do not receive timely or appropriate care for bacterial diseases, resulting in unnecessary animal death and crop loss. It is essential that veterinarians are trained in honey bee disease management to ensure that antibiotics are used judiciously, and honey bee colonies remain strong and healthy and available for crop pollination and honey production. ?The overall objectiveof this project is to create a honey bee medicine training program for veterinarians and students to improve the health of honey bees and to provide an additional source of revenue for veterinarians. We will meet overall objective by completing the following four objectives:Objective 1: Determine obstacles that prevent current veterinarians from working with beekeepers. In this objective we will develop and disseminate a survey that will have two main goals. First, we will ask veterinarians directly what information they feel is lacking, and what they feel is needed before they would be willing to work with beekeepers. Secondly, we will use this survey to identify veterinarians that are interested in participating in further training.Objective 2: Provide intensive training for veterinarians. In this objective we will provide intensive training for a small cohort of veterinarians in each state. Participating veterinarians will receive a field kit of supplies, printed resources, and hands-on training in hive handling, colony inspections, and disease diagnostics.Objective 3: Develop an online training course in honey bee medicine. We will create an online course for honey bee medicine using curated existing resources, our own teaching materials, and new materials created in response to the survey responses from Objective 1.Objective 4: Create an externship for veterinary students. We will work with our partners in extension, tech transfer teams, local beekeepers, and veterinarians to create experiential opportunities for veterinary students interested in honey bee medicine.
Project Methods
MethodsIn objective 1 we will develop a survey for practicing veterinarians. This survey will have two aims. First, we will identify veterinarians who are interested in further training to work with beekeepers to provide each state with a pool to contact for objectives 2 and 3. Secondly, we will ask all veterinarians what obstacles keep them from currently working with beekeepers and what resources they feel they need to start taking veterinary clients. We will use their responses, in conjunction with our previous communication with this group, to develop the training programs in objectives 2 and 3. Each state partner will disseminate the link to the online survey through contact with their state veterinary medical association as well as connections with their state veterinarian. In objective 2 we will provide intensive training for a small cohort of veterinarians in each participating state, providing them withinformation and resources that they need to immediately start working with beekeepers. Each participating veterinarian will receive the following:A field kit consisting of the protective equipment, beekeeping tools, and field diagnostic kits to safely inspect hives.Best management practice (BMP) guidance documents. Our team will partner with extension specialists, state apiary inspectors, and veterinarians, to develop best management practices for honeybees in the US. These documents will also be available to participants in the online training in objective 3.Hands-on training in colony inspection, field diagnostics, and antibiotic application. Extension educators in each participating state will provide hands-on clinics for veterinarians. Local beekeepers will host the courses in their apiaries and will have the time to interact and ask questions of the veterinarians. Continued training and support, including access to the online training program (Objective 3). Local extension will build a long-term, supportive relationship to provide resources and answer questions for veterinarians in this program. The veterinarians will join the national Honey Bee Veterinary Coalition and will also be part of a cohort of similarly trained veterinarians with whom they can communicate with and consult.Diagnostic training. MSU will host a training on lab diagnosis of veterinary diseases. We will train veterinarians on how to use microscopic identification of common pests and pathogens as well as how to properly take and prepare samples from honey bee colonies. Videos will be recorded during this and other hands-on training to be made available online and used in the course developed in objective 3.In objective 3 wewill develop online training for current veterinarians and veterinary medical students covering topics identified in objective 1 and outlined in objective 2 as well as in-depth instruction on honey bee biology, integrated pest management, and an understanding of the industry. This training will build upon already existing online content developed by all of our partner states, as well as curated available information from other institutions. This instruction will be fee-based, with funds supporting the program long-term. The program will be hosted on MSU's Desire to Learn Platform, and we will seek RACE (Registry of Approved Continuing Education) accreditation, so that veterinarians can obtain continuing education credits. We will aim to design modules that will align with the Honey Bee Veterinary Consortium's goal of a national certification program.We will use curated existing resources for our program as each of the partner universities have many quality resources already, but special attention will be made to develop materials that will fill in gaps in current available content (identified in Objective 1). Our online course program will be advertised through state veterinary medical associations, current colleges of veterinary medicine, as well as through the American Veterinary Medical Association. We will also use our ties with student groups in our partner states. In objective 4 we will create an externship for veterinary students. Because there are no full-time bee veterinarians in the US, a student cannot put together an externship that will provide them with experience working with bees and beekeepers. We will develop an externship course hosted at Michigan State University College of Veterinary Medicine where Dr. Milbrath is currently an instructor for the three-week honey bee medicine rotationfor fourth year students. We will target students coming out of this program as well as students from other programs. For example, Dr. Rangel has mentored three students in their independent research projects with honey bees while they were finishing their BS degrees at TAMU, who are now students of Veterinary Medicine at TAMU. Participating students will gain experience workingwith a variety of partners including veterinarians, extension, commercial beekeepers, tech transfer team members.We will develop a multi-week experience in which a select group of students working with multiple partners so a select group of students will gain hands on experience in honey bee husbandry, disease identification, and treatment.This program is designed to be sustainable and expandable. We have chosen our first three states (Michigan, Texas, and Florida) because of existing networks of beekeepers and extension as well as their importance to the beekeeping industry. Once we have established veterinarian training in the partner states on this project, we can expand to other important beekeeping states across the country by providing our field day design and resources to other extension educators and by increasing our advertising for our online courses.Efforts Time to create online courses and resources including evaluation of current resources, development of new content, uploading and editing of materials.Time of extension educators and beekeepers to host clinics and field days.Supplies to create kits.Coordination between participants to develop learning objectivesTime for creation of articles and presentations for outreach.Apiary sites to host clinics and externships.Cooperation of beekeeping, extension, and veterinary partners for externship experience.EvaluationThere will be multiple ways that we will evaluate the impact of this project. First, we will be able to track the number of individuals that register for and complete the online courses for beekeepers and veterinarians. We will also record attendance metrics for each of our hands-on clinics, diagnostic clinics, and talks that we give. We will use standard interaction metrics for evaluating use of online content including number of watches for videos and number of downloads for posted resources such as our guidance documents. Each online course will have testing material to ensure that the learning objectives are met in each module of the course. We will likewise evaluate the students that complete the externships, and will provide feedback surveys after our training programs. Finally, we will direct all of our participants to be listed on the Honey Bee Veterinary Consortium, and we hope to see many more veterinarians who are willing to work with beekeepers at the end of this program.