Kim Flottum
Editor in Chief
After receiving a degree in horticulture from UW Madison, Kim Flottum worked four years in the USDA Honey Bee Research Lab, studying pollination ecology. After that, he spent two years raising acres of fruits and vegetables, where bees played a large role. He brings this experience, plus nearly 20 years of writing and editing articles for beekeepers in the monthly magazine Bee Culture. He is the publisher of books on honey bee pests and diseases, marketing, queen production, beekeeping history, beginning beekeeping, and the classic industry reference, The ABC & XYZ of Bee Culture.
Ed Colby
Ed Colby and his gal Marilyn live in the Colorado River Valley, near New Castle, Colorado.
Jim Tew
Dr. James E. Tew is the beekeeping specialist for the Alabama Cooperative Extension System, Auburn University and emeritus professor, The Ohio State University. Jim has taught classes, provided extension services, and conducted applied research on honey bees and honey bee behavior. Additionally, he continues to contribute monthly articles for Bee Culture Magazine and other publications. He has authored: Beekeeping Principles, Backyard Beekeeping, Bee, Wisdom for Beekeepers, and The Beekeeper’s Problem Solver. He is a frequent speaker at state and national meetings and has traveled extensively to observe beekeeping techniques.
Toni Burnham
Toni became an urban beekeeper on April 9, 2005, when two packages of Italian bees from Georgia were placed in her hands in a park outside Baltimore, Maryland. Over the past ten years, those bees have led to revelations, friendships, adventures, anxieties, community organizing, teaching, learning, the legalization of beekeeping in Washington, and a deeply humbling daily joy for the chance to work with and for these creatures. Burnham now runs about 20 hives in a half dozen apiaries around Washington DC, is president of the Maryland State Beekeepers Association and founder of the DC Beekeepers Alliance, and mentor to beekeepers in community gardens, school yards, embassies, cemeteries, back yards, recreation centers, hotels, religious communities, and you-name-it around the Nation’s Capital. One of the signal honors of her career was being consulted about beekeeping in DC as a part of the preparations for the White House Apiary managed by Charlie Brandts. Burnham came to beekeeping through long time interests in gardening, wildflowers, and birding, and a professional background in technology communications and international development. She is a graduate of Bryn Mawr College with a B.A. in History and in English Literature, and completed her M.A. in International Studies from Johns Hopkins University.
Jennifer Berry
Jennifer has been the Apicultural Research Coordinator and Lab Manager at the University of Georgia Honey Bee Lab for the past 15 years. Over the years her research and extension objectives have concentrated on the sub-lethal effects of pesticides on honey bees, a queen breeding program, incorporating IPM techniques for varroa mite and SHB control and recently, an ambitious campaign educating the public about the importance of honey bees. Jennifer spends her nights and weekends operating Honey Pond Farm; a small honey bee queen and nuc operation specializing in raising healthy bees while selecting for longevity, pest resistance and brood production. She is almost a regular columnist for Bee Culture Magazine and occasionally writes for ones across the pond. Also, a long, long, time ago, she was president of EAS when it ventured into the Deep South for its 2006 meeting in Georgia. Jennifer travels extensively and speaks to local, state, national and international beekeeping associations. She is very passionate about keeping bees and other creatures alive and doing all that we can to protect them.
Ross Conrad
Ross has been learning, living and teaching bees since 1992. He learned his craft from world-renowned beekeeper and apitherapist, Charles Mraz, and Charlie’s son Bill. Conrad is a former president of the Vermont Beekeeper’s Association, a regular contributor to Bee Culture magazine, and author of the first book on organic beekeeping to be published in the U.S., Natural Beekeeping: Organic Approaches To Modern Apiculture. Ross regularly leads bee related presentations and organic beekeeping workshops and classes throughout North America. His small, human-scale beekeeping business Dancing Bee Gardens, sells honey and candles among other bee related products directly to friends, neighbors, and the local community.
Ann Harman
Ann’s lifelong interest in honey bees turned her career as a research chemist to beekeeping. With her background in apiculture, from being a student of Dr. Dewey Caron, she became a volunteer to teach beekeeping skills in Third-World Countries. She also writes monthly articles for Bee Culture, each issue of Beekeepers Quarterly and occasionally for BeeCraft. She is an Eastern Apicultural Society Master Beekeeper and teach beekeeping in the U.S. She is a member, and has been an officer, of numerous beekeeping associations. Her hives are now a teaching beeyard for youth groups, new beekeepers and for the local beekeeper club. She also enjoys horses and rides on the trails around my home.
Lawrence “Larry” John Connor
Larry is a Kalamazoo, Michigan native and departed Michigan State University upon completion of his Ph.D. dissertation on strawberry pollination, and assumed the position of extension apicultural entomologist at The Ohio State University – Columbus. There his program attracted the attention of investors interested in moving the Dadant Starline and Midnite Hybrid queen program to Florida to establish the world’s first mass production facility for instrumentally inseminated queen honey bees. Afterwards he moved to Connecticut where he established the Beekeeping Educational Service, offering educational programs for beekeepers. Later he purchased Wicwas Press from Dr. Roger and Mary Lou Morse. Operating from Kalamazoo, he has written and edited a number of beekeeping books and is in demand as a speaker at beekeeping meetings and workshop presenter.
Jeff Harris
Jeff is the extension/research apiculturist at Mississippi State University. He came to Mississippi after working for 15 years as a scientist with the USDA, ARS Honey Bee Breeding Lab in Baton Rouge, LA. He is best known for breeding lines of honey bees that express high levels of Varroa Sensitive Hygienic (VSH) behavior, which is a primary mechanism of resistance to Varroa mites. Prior to working with the government, he received a doctoral degree in insect physiology (Department of Zoology & Physiology) and a Master’s degree in entomology (Department of Entomology) from Louisiana State University.
Harris’s long term research goal is to move from selected VSH lines that may be genetically narrow to a more genetically robust stock of VSH bees with several desirable commercial qualities. Although queens produced from pure lines of VSH bees retain a useful level of resistance after they have been mated to just about any other stock of bees, the resistance is only half of the pure lines. Pure lines suffer from narrow selection that has reduced much needed genetic variability, and many purebred VSH queens need to be supported heavily for their colonies to survive. By narrowly focusing on a single trait, Harris’s previous breeding efforts missed the chance of producing a more sustainable stock with the VSH trait selected along with a suite of other important traits.
Jeff also conducts work on the possible effects of agro-chemicals on bee health. Some of this research is focused on comb contaminants, while other projects focus on effects of field-collected agro-chemicals on colony health in agricultural settings of the Mississippi Delta.
Phil Craft
Phil served as the Kentucky State Apiarist from 1999 through 2011. He is a graduate of Oberlin College in Ohio (BA in biology), and of the University of Kentucky. Phil continues to communicate with beekeepers through his “Ask Phil” question/answer column which appears monthly in Bee Culture magazine, and through his webpage, Philcrafthivecraft.com. He is also the U.S. technical adviser for Veto-pharma, the maker of Apivar. A native of the mountains of Eastern Kentucky, he now lives out in the sticks in the Bluegrass region of Kentucky near Lexington with his family, a very old dog, and some bee hives. You may send questions to Phil at phil@philcrafthivecraft.com.
Kim Lehman
Kim is a beekeeper and bee educator. She founded and coordinated the Kids and Bees Program, an informative program about honeybees for the public, at the American Beekeeping Federation Conventions in 15 states. As part of the Kids Page in Bee Culture magazine, Kim began a kids club called Bee Buddies and has members in every state. Her fun, educational honey bee programs include music, participation and hands-on activities. Kim is celebrating many years of working as a teacher, professional storyteller, musician, and puppeteer. Currently on the Texas Commission on the Arts Touring Roster, Kim has performed at hundreds of festivals, schools, libraries, and museums including being a featured teller at the Texas Storytelling Festival. Kim is in demand throughout Texas as an effective workshop presenter with practical, inexpensive program ideas on music, stories, crafts and puppets for librarians, teachers and parents.
Jessica Louque
Jessica is a Senior Study Director for Smithers Viscient, working in the Pollinator and Non-Target Organisms Division. She has been working as a honey bee researcher for 6 years, but is a fourth generation beekeeper through her family. Jessie married Bobby, who is also a honey bee researcher, and his four kids in 2013 in a bee themed wedding, including a black and yellow wedding dress. They live in North Carolina with their pit bull Atlantis, cats Harvey and Black Jack, and multiple chickens…with plans for expansion to goats in the future.
Clarence Collison
Clarence is an Emeritus Professor of Entomology and Emeritus Head of the Department of Entomology and Plant Pathology at Mississippi State University, Mississippi State, MS, having retired from the position June 30th, 2010. Prior to assuming this position at Mississippi State University in March 1989, he was an extension entomologist at The Pennsylvania State University where he served as a beekeeping/pollination specialist and livestock entomologist. Clarence grew up on a dairy farm in southern Michigan where he became interested in entomology through 4-H. He first became interested in beekeeping when he took an apiculture class, as a junior at Michigan State University. His Bachelor of Science (Entomology, 1968), Master of Science (Entomology, 1973) and Ph.D. (Entomology, 1976) degrees were from Michigan State University. Both his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees specialized in Apiculture; studying nectar secretion and factors affecting bee behavior and pollination of pickling cucumbers. He has taught apiculture at Michigan State University and The Pennsylvania State University. His areas of research emphasis were concerned with the effects of insecticidal sprays on honey bee foraging, factors that regulate drone production in honey bee colonies, pollination of birdsfoot trefoil and the distribution of varroa mites within the colony. He served as the major professor of 8 graduate students while he was at Penn State. From 1981to 1989 and from 2000 to 2011 he chaired the Eastern Apicultural Society committee that developed the Master Beekeeper Exams and conducted the testing program. He writes the monthly column “A Closer Look” and prior to that “Do You Know?” for Bee Culture, speaks at numerous workshops and frequently judges honey shows. His book “What Do You Know?” was published in 2003. He and his wife Sally live in Estill Springs, TN and have three sons; Craig, Keith, and Eric and have nine grandchildren.