Our cooperators are very patient with the peculiar needs of researchers. We need to do things to the test colonies that are not necessarily helpful to them. We sometimes need to work colonies to the bottom board during a nectar flow. We almost always need to have colonies that have varroa mites and sometimes we need to let control colonies die or almost die in order to get good test data. Our cooperators are incredibly patient and tolerant of requests that go against common beekeeping good sense, sometimes harm their colonies, even causing some to die, and almost always reducing their honey production. These cooperators are essential to our programs, which would be far less effective without them.

The left navigation panel has links to more information on our cooperators.