Our guest today is Danielle Downey, the Executive Director for Project Apis m., whose mission is to fund and direct research to enhance the health and vitality of honey bee colonies while improving crop production. Danielle has been working with honey bees and the parasites that plague them for 25 years. Her background includes training and research from bee labs in Minnesota, Canada and France; beekeeper education, work with commercial beekeepers and queen breeders, regulatory work as a State Apiarist in Utah and Hawaii, and wrangling bees for TV and film. She has worked closely with the Apiary Inspectors of America, Bee Informed Project and a bee breeding project with collaborators in Hawaii, Louisiana and Europe selecting and refining Varroa resistant bees. She holds a BSc from University of Minnesota and an MSc from Simon Fraser University.
Listen in to learn how Project Apis m. has accomplished valuable and sustained research for both pollinators and the agriculture and beekeeping industries.
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“We know that scientific research is the best way to answer questions about how to do business and improve agriculture…and beekeepers and growers, at the time of Colony Collapse Disorder, had really pressing questions that nobody was answering.” – Danielle Downey
Show Notes:
- What got Danielle into studying bees
- When and why Danielle started the Project Apis m.
- Why a project like Apis m. is so valuable for everybody in the agriculture and beekeeping industry
- How Danielle has centralized support for their project’s goal
- How Project Apis m. maintains their scope and goal over their long timeline
- What Project Apis m. has accomplished since it’s inception
- Why Danielle is looking to change our chemical treatment of varroa
- Why Project Apis m. believes that “practical is tactical”
- What makes a promising proposal for Project Apis m.
- What Project Apis m.’s “Seeds For Bees” program has done to help growers establish pollinator habitats
- How Danielle’s project has helped them learn more ways to fight common pollinator problems
- The importance of cover crops in efficiently grown agricultural areas
- How farmers can use unused or unprofitable portions of their farm to create pollinator habitats
- How Project Apis m.’s “Seeds For Bees” intersects with monarch butterfly conservation
“What it takes to make the change on the ground is to show and prove what is happening, and then outreach to educate on the alternatives, and change those practices.” – Danielle Downey
Links Mentioned:
- Learn more about Project Apis m.
- Find out more about Project Apis m.’s program for growers, Seeds for Bees
- Danielle’s favorite book about pollinators, “The Biology of the Honey Bee” by Mark L. Winston
- Danielle’s favorite tool in her work, powdered sugar
- Danielle’s favorite bee (aside from the honeybee): the wool carder bee
- Connect with Danielle at the Project Apis m. website