BeeCon 2024 - BEEc - Bee Ecology, Evolution and Conservation

The in-person attendees at BeeCon 2024. They were joined by hundreds of people online as well!

BeeCon 2024 was a hybrid event that brought together bee biologists on a global scale to discuss bees, collection methods, pollination, genomics, conservation and behaviour. BeeCon took place on Oct. 17 (via Zoom Webinar) and on Oct 18 with an in-person option at York University (LSB 105) as well as a virtual option. More details including the schedule, a full program, and location details are posted below.

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Watch the full playlist of BeeCon 2024 videos, or see below for individual videos.

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Two Page Schedule at a Glance

Full Schedule with Abstracts

Full Program

Keynote Speaker: Dr. Chelsea Cook

Chelsea N. Cook, PhD, Assistant Professor, Marquette University

Chelsea Cook is currently an assistant professor at Marquette University in Milwaukee Wisconsin and the Chief Science Officer at HiveTech Solutions, a company that creates environmentally controlled storage for small farmers. Previously, she was an National Institutes of Health postdoctoral fellow at Arizona State University, where she studied how individual learning behavior scales to shape collective behavior. As a PhD student at the University of Colorado, Boulder, she studied the social, physiological, and ecological mechanisms of collective thermoregulatory behavior in honey bees, which will be a large topic of today’s talk. A major part of her mission as a researcher is to make science more accessible, so she has developed courses in beekeeping and environmental biology that she teaches in prisons and addiction recovery facilities.

Short Talk Abstract

Animals must be able to navigate a changing environment, whether that is daily temperature fluctuations or long-term climate change. Social animals are hypothesized to manage a changing environment more effectively. In this talk, I discuss how my lab is testing this hypothesis by studying how social insects sense, integrate, communicate, and collectively behave to manage a changing world.

Website

Thanks for our sponsors!

BeeCon 2024 is a hybrid in-person and online event, and we plan to run it completely free for all participants thanks to our generous sponsors!

Support for this event is provided by York University’s:

Learn more about past BeeCon events here.

Day 1 Presentations

Laura Newburn, Coordinator of the Centre for Bee Ecology, Evolution and Conservation, gave the introduction to Day 1 of BeeCon 2024.

Kit Prendergast, a Postdoctoral Fellow from Curtin University and University of Southern Queensland gave a talk entitled: Using bee hotels to assess fitness impacts of the European honey bee Apis mellifera on cavity nesting native bees

Sydney Wizenberg, a Postdoctoral Fellow from Naturalis Biodiversity Center gave a talk entitled: Monitoring phenological changes via the plant-pollinator interface

Arielle Lofchick, a PhD student from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem gave a talk entitled: Assessing Climate Change Impacts on Pollinators and Forage Plants in Mediterranean Shrubland.

Ratko Pavlovic, a PhD Student from the University of Belgrade gave a talk entitled: New pollen substitutes for honey bees (Apis mellifera) with edible insect flour

Annalie Melin, a Postdoctoral Fellow from the South African National Biodiversity Institute and Nelson Mandela University gave a talk entitled: New taxonomic insights into long-legged oil bees: Exploring the Great Escarpment of South Africa

Kathrin Krausa, a Visiting Scientist at Aga Khan University gave a talk entitled: BEEtopia a Center for the Conservation of Bees through Research and Education in Tanzania.

Nicolas Picat Saridaki and Lucy Xu, Researchers from the Global Portal Institute gave a talk entitled: Tracing and Scaling the Value of Native Pollination for a More Feasible Future.

Avery Russell, an Assistant Professor from Missouri State University gave a talk entitled: Ecological and evolutionarily consequences of buzz pollination.

Anupreksha Jain, a PhD Student from UW-Madison gave a talk entitled: Automating bumble bee tracking to study sublethal impacts of pesticides on behavior.

Julia Leone, a Pollinator Biologist with Friends of the Mississippi River gave a talk entitled: Habitat Assessments for Bumble Bees in Minnesota Restored and Remnant Prairie.

Frédéric McCune, a Research Associate from Université Laval gave a talk entitled: Leveraging community science for large-scale monitoring of insect pollinators: insights from Abeilles citoyennes.

Craig Symonds, a Photographer from Craig Symonds Photography gave a talk entitled: Exploring Mexico’s Stingless Bees: A Photographer’s Perspective.

Wyatt Zabinski, a PhD Student from the University of Kansas gave a talk entitled: Andrena nimigracilis, a New Species (Hymenoptera: Andrenidae) from México.

Day 2 Presentations

Mariana Rodriguez Lopez, a PhD Student from York University gave a talk entitled: Effects of air pollutants on honey bee cognition, behavior, and gene expression.

Amanda Liczner, a Postdoctoral Fellow from the University of Guelph gave a talk entitled: Unveiling critical habitat: behavioural insights into overwintering and nesting requirements of bumble bees using radio telemetry.

Pascale Bider, a MSc Student from the University of Toronto gave a talk entitled: Effects of Invasive Plant Removal on an Urban Plant-Bee Community.

Lydia Wong, a PhD Student from the University of Ottawa gave a talk entitled: High and dry: individual reproductive output in subalpine bees declines with increasing drought severity.

Katherine Chau, a Postdoctoral Fellow from York University gave a talk entitled: The impact of land use and social environment on bee development and their microbiomes.

Jesse Huisken, a PhD Student from York University gave a talk entitled: Social networks and social environment in a facultatively social bee.

Laura Newburn, Coordinator of the Centre for Bee Ecology, Evolution and Conservation, gave the concluding remarks to Day 2 of BeeCon 2024.

Instructions for BeeCon Speakers:

Speakers will be allowed a maximum of 12 minutes of presentation time, with a 2-3 min Q&A period at the conclusion.

For those presenting virtually: We will be using Zoom’s webinar feature as the platform. Each speaker will be added as a webinar panelist for the day on which you will be presenting. Please join the webinar in the break session before your talk and identify yourself as a panelist.

For those presenting in person: We will be using Microsoft PowerPoint run on a Windows-based computer. Please bring your presentation on a USB or send to beec @ yorku.ca in advance so we can pre-load the presentations.