
Semi-Annual Speakers

Backyard Bees to Booming Business
Christine McDonald - Rushing Rivers Apiaries - Terrace, BC
Christine McDonald and her husband, Tavis, run Rushing River Apiaries in Terrace, BC. They run 200 colonies and produce nucs for the northwest region, and wildflower and fireweed honey for their local markets. Formerly a teacher, Christine has taken her love of educating online, where she has a social media following of more than 50,000 people who enjoy her humour, authenticity, and mentorship. Christine will be sharing about how they grew from backyard beekeepers to a sustainable small business, and the role that social media has in their business.

Keeping bees out of trees... so you can make more honey
Nectar and pollen plants of the Pacific Northwest (reloaded)
Andony Melathopoulos - Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon
Andony Melathopoulos is an Associate Professor of Pollinator Health Extension in the Department of Horticulture at Oregon State University. OSU’s work around pollinator health comes from mandates passed by the Oregon Legislature. He has three primary responsibilities: 1) working with land managers on reducing pesticide exposure to bees and increasing bee habitat, 2) organizing a state-wide native bee survey (the Oregon Bee Atlas), 3) outreach to Oregonians on bee biodiversity, which includes hosting a weekly podcast on pollinator health (PolliNation). He also sits on the Steering Committee of the Oregon Bee Project, which coordinates pollinator health work across state agencies.

Bees, Heat & Drought
Shelley Hoover - University of Lethbridge, Lethbridge AB
Dr. Shelley Hoover is a research associate in biology and agriculture. Her research focusses on honeybees, including nutrition, queen breeding and diseases of honeybees, as well as applied bee keeping management. Hoover also studies crop pollination, plant-bee interactions, and fundamental questions about bee behaviour and sociobiology.

Colony Increases for Backyarders and Small Scale Operators
Liz Huxter - Kettle Valley Queens, Grand Forks, BC
A British Columbia bee breeder, Elizabeth Huxter and partner Terry Huxter run a queen, nuc and honey farm. She has extensive experience with decades of work she has done in developing sustainable honey bee populations. She has collaborated with academic and government researchers and with other bee breeders. She is the managing partner of Kettle Valley Queens in Grand Forks, British Columbia, where she breeds honey bees for resistance to pests and pathogens. In 1992 she worked with researchers to find tracheal mite-resistant bees. She has led investigations with the BC Bee Breeders Queen Testing Program searching for the most varroa mite-resistant queen stock in Canada and was a breeder for two projects in collaboration with the University of British Columbia, Agriculture and Agri-food Canada and University of Manitoba. In 2015, she investigated the impact sub-lethal levels of neonics have on hygienic behavior working with Marta Guarna and Jeff Pettis. She is the past president of the BC Honey Producers and BC Bee Breeders and presently vice president of the BC Bee Breeders association. Her current focus is to optimize but not necessarily maximize apiculture.

Paul van Westendorp, BC Provincial Apiculturist, Tsawwassen, BC
As a UBC graduate, Paul had the opportunity to be involved in apiculture research, followed by several years of tropical apiculture in East Africa, where beekeeping development and education offered subsistence farmers supplemental income without placing demands on land ownership. In the late 1980s, Paul was appointed as Provincial Apiculturist of Alberta, and was subsequently appointed to the same position in British Columbia.

Electric fencing designs to effectively protect hives - from even the most determined grizzly bear!"
Gillian Sanders, Grizzly Bear Coexistence Solutions - Meadow Creek, BC
Gillian Sanders grew up in Vancouver and has been homesteading and beekeeping in the North Kootenay Lake area for 30 years. Gillian holds a MA in Environmental Education and Communication, with her thesis research identifying bridges and barriers to coexisting with grizzly bears in her rural home community of Meadow Creek. With the support of various funding agencies, in 2013 Gillian expanded her work throughout the Kootenay region as coordinator of Grizzly Bear Coexistence Solutions. Gillian works closely with hunters, farmers, ranchers, recreationalists, environmental groups, and government to promote effective tools and education that enable people to reduce conflicts with bears and to ensure the long-term persistence of healthy populations of grizzly bears in B.C.