Olav Rueppell is a professor of honey bee biology and health at the University of Alberta, Canada. During the past 23 years of his research on honey bees, he has mentored over 100 students and published over 100 scientific articles. The topics that he is addressing include the behavior, life history, and genome of honey bees, as well as understanding stress, selective breeding, and the interactions of honey bees with the two major biological threats to honey bees: Varroa and viruses.

Guy Collins wears 2 hats. He is employed by NC State University where he serves as Professor and Extension Cotton Specialist. In this role, he develops research-based recommendations for North Carolina cotton growers and advises them on the latest management practices that maximize profits, sustainability, and environmentally responsibility. The majority of his research is on-farm, in producers fields across all parts of North Carolina where cotton is grown. He began his career in 2009 at the University of Georgia as the Extension Cotton Agronomist and served 5 years there. A former colleague and friend in Georgia later went on to be employed by Rossman Apiaries, which facilitated Dr Collins’s endeavor into commercial beekeeping, which is the other hat he wears.

Guy, and his wife Ashley, also own and operate COTTON BOLL Pollinators LLC in Bailey NC, which was launched approximately 5 years ago. Guy had been beekeeping with his father on the family farm for approximately 15 years, but his connections with Rossman Apiaries spurred him into pursuing commercial beekeeping. Through COTTON BOLL Pollinators, they now sell bee packages and supplies from Rossman Apiaries, as well as their own NC-raised Nucs and Queens, as well as pollination services and of course, cotton honey.

Bees have been a passion of mine for over 30 years, but that passion was never fully realized until I became the lone bee wrangler for a group of Benedictine monks at Saint Joseph Abbey in Southeast Louisiana, about 50 miles north of New Orleans. It was there that I began seeing bees in a different light, a marvel of God’s creation. As I had every intention of becoming a monk, and I spent over 12 years discerning that vocation, the prayer life seeped into my everyday life, and this greatly influenced my beekeeping practices. As the fledgling Abbee Honey Operation at St. Joseph was just beginning, as well as my YouTube channel about the bees at the abbey, the flood of 2016 hit, causing over 33 million dollars in damage to the abbey and washed away every hive we had . I had to make the decision, to call it quits or move forward. Well, I chose the harder route and aggressively began building up colonies by doing removals, making splits, and catching swarms. And God blessed the proceedings. We went from zero hives in 2016 to over 200 in 2020. Then, after considering our exact needs of the operation, we scaled down to 150 which is where I want to stay. As I said earlier, I discerned monastic life for over 12 years, but the vows I took at the end of last September were not religious vows. Instead, they were marriage vows and I married Mona whom I met from my YouTube channel. Thank you, Jesus!

Randy McCaffrey has 33 years as a contractor and structural claims specialist. In 2010 at the age of forty he assisted his brother in the removal of a honey bee colony from an old furniture warehouse. This experience began his development of a fascination with honey bees. In 2010, armed with his knowledge of construction and his newfound fascination with bees he began removing and relocating feral bee colonies from commercial and residential structures along the Mississippi Gulf Coast. As of the summer of 2023, the number of cut outs (hive removals/relocations) he has done total nearly one thousand and swarm catches total approximately five hundred. Randy typically keeps forty to fifty colonies of his own but regularly works alongside large commercial beekeeping operations purely for the enjoyment and education to be gained. His family, including himself, his father, and his brother, keep approximately two hundred and fifty colonies in total. Much of his work with bee removals includes mite load and disease resistance studies in feral or otherwise chemically untreated honey bee colonies. He video records much of his work which he shares through social media platforms such as YouTube, Instagram and TikTok to help educate, entertain, and inspire current and future generations of beekeepers. His work can be found on most large social media platforms under the channel name 628DirtRooster with the tagline “Where Hobby Beekeeping Is a Way of Life”. Randy along with his wife Elizabeth are continuing to grow their beekeeping and mentoring business. They recently added a subsidiary named Coastal Grove Bee Works which will focus on mentoring beekeepers, honey sales and a lady’s beekeeping apparel line.