Winners Will Use $40,000 in Prize Money to
Improve, Accelerate Honey Bee Nutrition
The Honey Bee Health Coalition announced that it has awarded $40,000 to four innovative projects aimed at improving honey bee nutrition and supporting honey bee and pollinator health. The awards, announced at the 2018 American Bee Research Conference, are part of the Coalition’s inaugural Bee Nutrition Challenge.
The Bee Nutrition Challenge winners and awards are:
- $15,000 for Miguel Corona, Steven Cook, and Jay Evans, USDA, Agricultural Research Service, Bee Research Lab, Development and Testing of Optimal Seasonal Nutritional Supplements For Honey Bees
- $10,000 for Waled Suliman and Brandon Hopkins, Washington State University, A Novel Feed Additive for Protecting Bees and Confronting Colony Collapse Disorder
- $7,500 for Paul Stamets, Fungi Perfecti LLC, Fungal Extracts for Honey Bee Health
- $7,500 for Patrick Heritier-Robbins, Georgia Institute of Technology, Bee Ultra Sound
“Supporting honey bee nutrition is essential to achieving and sustaining a healthy population of honey bees. These projects are exactly the types of innovative ideas and initiatives the Coalition was established to support,” said Julie Shapiro, the facilitator of the Honey Bee Health Coalition and a senior policy director at the Keystone Policy Center. “The Coalition is thrilled to support these outstanding projects and looks forward to seeing how they support honey bees.”
The Coalition launched the Bee Nutrition Challenge in August 2017 to find new, innovative ways to improve honey bee forage and nutrition — one of the primary drivers of the challenges honey bees and managed pollinators face throughout North America. The finalists, announced in November, presented their ideas to a panel of honey bee health experts earlier this week.
Monsanto, a member of the Coalition, generously provided support for the prize funds. In addition to the prize, the winners will have full access to subject matter experts and others from the Coalition’s member organizations — including mentoring and advice.
The Coalition livestreamed the announcement (as well as the finalists’ presentations) via Facebook Live: https://www.facebook.com/pg/beehealthorg/videos/
