My research interests are fluid and designed to address immediate needs of various agriculture stakeholder groups and particularly beekeepers. Projects encompass both basic and applied approaches to understanding and improving honey bee health and working towards solutions for a number of challenges facing honey bees. Ongoing research projects include understanding queen mating and reproductive processes, discovery and evaluation of novel biopesticides for efficacy against varroa mites, and evaluating orchard management practices with a goal of improving honey bee health. Some of our more fun projects revolve around precision beekeeping and investigate the use of cutting edge technologies to make beekeeping more efficient and sustainable.

My primary responsibilities are in providing professional support and education to California's beekeepers, growers, pesticide applicators, and other stakeholder groups. I teach beginner, intermediate and advanced beekeeping workshops, for the first ever California Master Beekeeper Program. We also offer apiculture education for veterinarians in collaboration with the Western Institute of Food Safety and Security (WIFFS). In addition to teaching formal workshops I serve on various commodity boards as a research liaison and adviser allowing me to directly impact California Agriculture.  Our most recent effort is the development of the Bee Health Hub at UC Davis providing professional field and lab services to stakeholders in California.