FCBA February Meeting
Hygienic Bees
Happy New Year and Welcome everyone! Dr. Kaira Wagoner will be our featured speaker this month. She will be covering Hygenic Bees, the development of a novel pheromone-based to tool to improve honey bee Varroa and disease resistance, as well as the potential effects of wire stabilizers on honey bee health. This article features on her work from the UNCG research magazine: https://researchmagazine.uncg.edu/spring-2023/part-of-the-hive/bee-business/.
Come join us for food, honeybee stories, and learn something new! We hope to see you there!
Please click here to sign up for the Potluck
Kaira Wagoner is graduate of Guilford College, earned her masters and doctorate degrees from the University of North Carolina Greensboro (UNCG), and served five years as a post-doctoral fellow in the UNCG social insect lab. Dr. Wagoner currently serves as a Research Scientist, splitting her time between UNCG and Optera, a Greensboro-based start-up focused on improving honey bee health that was co-founded by Dr. Wagoner in 2020. Dr. Wagoner’s research focuses on honey bee pests and diseases, particularly as they relate to the immune mechanism hygienic behavior, the ability of adult honey bees to detect and remove unhealthy brood from the hive. Dr. Wagoner is currently using natural honey bee stress signals to develop novel tools to facilitate apiary management and improve selection of disease and pest-resistant honey bees. When not in the lab or apiary, Dr. Wagoner enjoys traveling, playing games, and spending time in the great outdoors with her husband and two nature-loving boys.
