The following contributors have indicated an interest in participating as part of the Apis Information Resource Center.
David Carlson is retired from CMAVE in Gainesville, Florida.
Kalamazoo College, Michigan. BA Chemistry 1962; U. Hawai’i Manoa, Honolulu, HI. MS PhysicalOrganic Chemistry 1966, and U. Hawai’i Manoa, PhD Physical Organic Chemistry 1970
USDA Research Chemist, 1969-2006. Insects Affecting Man & Animals, Gainesville, FL 32607. Later name, Center for Man, Agricultural & Veterinary Entomology GS-15. Adjunct Assoc Prof, Entomology & Nematology.
Scientific career involved mostly Flies and Mosquitoes, 207 Refereed journal publications, 4 book chapters. Presentations at ESA, ACS, USDA, IAEA (Vienna work study), many other universities and colleges.
Examples: pioneering sex pheromone discoveries in many Diptera: House fly, stable fly, horn fly, face fly, tsetse fly (6 species), Drosophila melanogaster, New world screwworm fly. Many of these involved field work doing novel sex pheromone bioassays all over the world.
Other discoveries included “systematic families of related structures” of long chain methyl branched cuticular hydrocarbons. Pattern recognition of these hydrocarbons allowed identification of cryptic spp., before DNA became known: mosquito spp complexes, Invasive German vs Asian cockroaches, Most of the Tsetse flies. IDs of Africanized honey bees in the presence of European strains. Descriptions of hydrocarbon patterns in cryptic bees, Yellow Rain solution. Tabanid flies species conflicts.
Recently, Dave has become involved in looking at biorational controls of the Varroa bee mite . Originally considering, TMOF, which he is a pioneer in developing, he is currently pursuing other materials that might provide important advances in this field. Contact him at dacarls@gmail.com
Ron Miksha is a geophysicist who also does a bit of science writing and blogging. Ron is based in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, and has written two books, and dozens of magazine and journal articles. In beekeeping circles, Ron is known for his Bad Beekeeping Blog,which he recently invigorated. His list of famous beekeepers includes himself among the crowd. Some six years of old posts are available 2008 through 2013. Finally, it’s possible to visit his wikipedia page, and his comprehensive list of 1000 bee links across the World Wide Web is worth a visit
Gilles Ratia is a pioneer of the Internet, publishing one of the first websites dedicated to the apicultural community in four languages.
Peter Loring Borst has worked in the beekeeping industry since his first job working as beekeeper’s helper in Wolcott NY, in 1974. In the late 1970s he helped run a beekeeping supply store in the San Diego area, where he served beekeepers of all levels of expertise. In addition to selling equipment and supplies, he was able to get an especially broad viewpoint of their problems and concerns.
Among other things, Peter was Senior Apiarist at Cornell’s Dyce Lab for Honey Bee Research for seven years. He was an apiary inspector for New York State from 2006 to 2008. He is currently employed at Cornell doing biomedical research and is Vice President of the Finger Lakes Bee Club. A prolific publisher, his writings and photographs can be found in a number of periodicals. He is a frequent contributor to the Bee-L Discussion list.
David MacFawn is a beekeeper and writer versed in the financial underpinnings of beekeeping operations. He has developed a detailed spreadsheet and actively counsels those indicating an interest in this area. Recently, he has collaborated on an economic study involving cotton pollination. He has kept a variety of honey bees in Maryland including (Dark German bees), Virginia (Italian), North Carolina (Italian), Colorado (Russian), and South Carolina (Italian and Russian Hybrid). He is a North Carolina Master Craftsman Beekeeper, co-founded the South Carolina Master Beekeeping Program, and was recently named South Carolina Beekeeper of the Year. He assisted Dr. Fell at Virginia Tech in developing the Virginia Master Beekeeping Program, incorporated the South Carolina Beekeepers Association as a 501 (C) 3 Non Profit Corporation, and published several (over five) articles in the American Bee Journal. Recently he has published a list of safety measures in the beeyard along with a cohort of collaborators.
David has co-authored a book, “Getting the Best From Your Bees“, for the practicing beekeeper. He has a BS in Electrical Engineering and a Masters in Business Administration with a concentration in Finance and Operations Research. He served in the computer business for over 30 years as a Customer Service Director responsible for worldwide support planning, training/education, logistics, call center support, and professional services at Sun Microsystems and a subset of this at National Cash Register (NCR). David was also a Federal Systems Product Manager responsible for new Department of Defense (DOD) system definition and development at Data General. He resides in the Columbia, South Carolina, USA area and is an active sideline beekeeper.
Bill Catherall resides near Portland, Oregon. He developed a blog that catalogs his experiences as a brand-new beekeeper. You can learn more about Bill via a recent podcast about his activities as a video blogger. His resultant video series is a priceless resource for beginning beekeepers. In 2018 Bill moved on to other activities and is no longer publishing his Bee Vlog. The Apis Information Resource Center is pleased to cooperate with Bill by bringing a collection of his videos directly to beekeepers via this integrated website. The goal is to add another voice to his trials and tribulations as a beginner, hopefully bringing a richer experience to the beekeeping audience.
Dave Cushman is deceased. However, his web site is full of relevant beekeeping information. Roger Patterson continues to keep it available, with the following caveat: “Dave deliberately held no copyright and granted free use of any material or software, apart from family photographs, all of which are copyright. Some are the copyright of his sister Anji Cushman and some others are the copyright of his father, Albert Cushman. Please respect this.
“The policy of this website has always be openness and will continue to be so. If you wish to use material you are welcome to do so, but please give a credit as follows – ‘Credit: Dave Cushman’s website. ‘ ” I intend to link to and otherwise use Dave’s resources as an official contributor to the Apis Information Resource Center with all this in mind.
Randy Oliver is that rarest of individuals who is both a commercial beekeeper and trained experimenter in the scientific method, meshing the art and science of beekeeping elegantly into an extensive web site. He characterizes it as “… a record of my learning process as I try to understand aspects of colony health and productivity, and the reasons why various management techniques work (or don’t). My writing is a digestion of the scientific literature, relating it to my day-to-day hands on experience and observations in my 40+ yards of bees, and then sharing what I’ve learned about the biological processes happening in the hive with other beekeepers. I then leave it to each beekeeper to make their own informed management decisions.”
Randy resides in California and thus, one gets a nice flavor of his beekeeping activity from the west coast. Another perspective of his activities can be found in this podcast.
Rusty Burlew is celebrating her sixth anniversary publishing a prominent blog about bees and beekeeping. She graduated with a master of environmental studies degree from the Evergreen State College, spending time researching the effects of contaminated pollen on larval bee development, and studying the possibility of using non-Apis bees to supplement or replace the honey bee in modern agriculture. Of special interest are her papers and retrospectives on pesticides and their application and how they affect bees in general.
Dr. Diana Sammataro is co-author of the Beekeeper’s Handbook and does independent bee research under her new business name, Diana Brand Honey Bee Research LLC. She began keeping bees in 1972 in Litchfield, CT while attending the University of Michigan, earning degrees in landscape architecture and urban forestry. After teaching beekeeping in the Philippines as Peace Corps volunteer, she worked at the USDA Honey Bee Laboratory in Madison, WI (no longer in existence) and was employed as a sales manager at the A.I. Root for a period before entering the Ph.D. program in Entomology at the Ohio State University, graduating in 1991. Dr. Sammataro began work at the USDA Tucson, AZ Honey Bee Laboratory in 2002, retiring in 2014. She is co-editor of a collection of bee research articles: Honey Bee Colony Health: Challenges and Sustainable Solutions and has published over 40 scientific articles, and contributed to five other books about honey bee health and management.
James Fischer is a New York City beekeeper who currently teaches the “absolutely free beekeeping course.” He is a frequent contributor to the Bee-L discussion list, and well known for development of an alternative honey harvesting product, Bee-Quick®, and something called the Nectar-Detector®, an answer to the traditional hive scale. A few years ago he created the Wall of Shame, a satirical exposé of food companies that print ‘Honey” in large print on their label, but put almost no actual product in the box, as revealed in their ingredients lists. Jim also has been frequent contributor to bee journals, peppered with occasional rants about everything from honey adulteration to federal regulators (APHIS) and Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD).
Kiwimana seeks to provide beekeeping information from New Zealand. A significant list of relevant podcasts by the Gary and Margaret duo is found at the web site. They also publish a recurring newsletter.
Al Summers is a member of the Colorado Professional Beekeeping Association. Originally from Southern California, he grew-up around beekeepers and beekeeping. As a child and teenager, the County Bee Inspector was Al’s neighbor. He worked in commercial beekeeping, honey and beeswax processing in the early 1960’s. In addition to the practical aspects of beekeeping, Al has studied Entomology and Apiculture at both undergraduate and graduate levels.He moved to Colorado in 1976 and resumed beekeeping (got new hives) in 1983. He has served as an officer or been a member in numerous beekeeping organizations at local, regional, national and international levels. He has served as an officer or been a member in numerous beekeeping organizations at local, regional, national and international levels. Al has a Japanese wife and spends time in Japan most years where he is acquainted with both beekeepers and researchers, meanwhile producing Ichiban (number one) honey from his apiaries in Colorado. His recent project is studying videos of Brother Adam, a well known bee breeder who developed the so-called Buckfast strain of honey bees.
Joe Traynor worked for Valley Pollination Service, Bakersfield, CA, under Charles Reed, where he was introduced to the world of beekeeping. At one time, Joe had purchased and run 600 colonies of bees. Joe had also worked for a fertilizer company, an Ag consulting company, and Superior Farms(Now Paramount Farms). Since 1973, Joe has owned and operated Scientific Ag. Co., which is both a pollination service modeled after Valley Pollination Service and a consultation service in soil fertility and plant nutrition.
Joe has authored 3 books, “Ideas in Soil and Plant Nutrition” and “Almond Pollination Handbook for Almond Growers and Beekeepers”. He has donated the profits for bee research, primarily for parasitic mite control. His book, Honey – The Gourmet Medicine, was published in 2002.
