Jessica Mjelde

Excited about the Summer Meeting yet? NCSBA has an intriguing lineup of speakers. Read a bit more about some of amazing apiarists presenting in July.

Phil Craft served as the Kentucky State Apiarist from 1999 through 2011. Phil continues to communicate with beekeepers through his “Ask Phil” question/answer column which appears in Bee Culture magazine, and through his webpage, Philcrafthivecraft.com. He is also the U.S. technical adviser for Veto-pharma, the maker of Apivar, Varroa Easy Check, and other products. A native of the mountains of Eastern Kentucky, he now lives out in the sticks in the Bluegrass region of Kentucky near Lexington with his family, a very old dog, and some bee hives. 

Dr. Thomas D. Seeley is the Horace White Professor in Biology at Cornell University. He is based in the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior, where he teaches courses on animal behavior and does research on the behavior and social life of honey bees.  His scientific work has primarily focused on understanding the phenomenon of swarm intelligence (SI):  the solving of cognitive problems by a group of individuals who pool their knowledge and process it through social interactions.  His work is summarized in three books: Honeybee Ecology (1985), The Wisdom of the Hive (1995), and Honeybee Democracy (2010). 

David Tarpy is a Professor of Entomology and the Extension Apiculturist at North Carolina State University since 2003. His research interests focus on the biology and behavior of honey bee queens in order to better improve the overall health of queens and their colonies. His work has provided some of the best empirical evidence that multiple mating by queens confers multiple and significant benefits to colonies through increased genetic diversity of their nestmates. More recently, his lab group has focused on the reproductive potential of commercially produced queens, testing their genetic diversity and mating success in an effort to improve queen quality.