Project Overview

Reports

Commodities

• Animal Products: honey

• Animals: bees

• Pollinators: habitat, honey bees

Target Pests

Practices

• Pest Management: cultural control, mechanical control, monitoring/scouting, pesticide application timing, pesticide resistance management

• Animal Production: parasite control

• Production Systems: other

Across the United States, beekeeping operations of all sizes (commercial, sideline, and backyard) experience annual honey bee colony losses at higher rates than previous decades (van Engelsdorp, et al. 2008). Colony losses result in reduced income from honey production and reduced pollination services. The scientific community understands higher rates of colony loss are the result of four major honey bee stressors: 1) pests and disease, 2) loss of habitat/poor forage availability, 3) pesticide exposure, and 4) negative effects that result from multiple stressors working synergistically (Goulson et al. 2015). As more individuals across the country take up beekeeping as a hobby and the demand for pollination services to aid crop production increases, so do the challenges of implementing successful integrated pest management (IPM) strategies that are both pollinator-friendly and effective. Beekeeping educators and extension professionals play an integral role in providing beekeepers with the tools necessary to meet these challenges.

Each year beekeeping extension and education programs across the country independently implement new innovative programs and develop up-to-date extension materials such as handouts and videos on the topic of apicultural IPM. However, without a platform for sharing novel ideas in beekeeping IPM education and outreach, many apicultural educators are unaware of emerging successful programs in other regions. Such programs include outreach to veterinarians that must provide beekeepers with prescriptions to treat bacterial hive diseases, developing county extension networks to assist beekeepers with pest and disease identification, and providing programming and translated beekeeping extension materials to Spanish speaking communities. Moreover, there are currently few resources in Spanish for beekeeping in the United States, especially northern climates. Without such materials it is difficult to provide outreach and education to the growing number of Spanish-speaking beekeepers and commercial apiary workers in the United States.

The IPM4Bees Working Group proposes to 1) Sustain and enhance a working group that offers researchers, extension professionals, and other stakeholders multiple opportunities to collaborate and share bee IPM resources that benefit honey bee and native bee health, 2) Share extension resources and increase accessibility to Spanish-language bee IPM materials, and 3) Collect new information about our stakeholders and audiences to improve extension and education efforts.

By meeting these objectives the working group will foster a stronger network of bee IPM extension and education professionals, broaden access to bee IPM educational materials, meet emerging needs of Spanish-speaking beekeepers, and gain new insights on the attitudes of our beekeeper, farmer, and landowner stakeholders. 

Objective 1: Sustain and enhance a working group that offers researchers, extension professionals, and other stakeholders multiple opportunities to collaborate and share bee IPM resources that benefit honey bee and native bee health.

Objective 2: Share extension resources and increase accessibility to Spanish-language bee IPM materials.

Objective 3: Collect new information about our stakeholders and audiences to improve extension and education efforts.