Educating Honey Bee Veterinarians with Meghan Milbrath and Eva Reinicke (S6,E30)

S6, E30 - Educating Honey Bee Veterinarians with Meghan Milbrath and Eva Reinicke

Jeff Ott: Welcome to  Beekeeping Today podcast presented by Better Bee, your source for beekeeping news, information, and entertainment. I'm Jeff Ott.

Becky Masterman: I'm Becky Masterman.

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Becky: Thank you so much, Jeff, and thank you for giving me your password to the studio. Dr. Meghan Milbrath from Michigan State University and I can take it over for an hour. Meghan, welcome to Beekeeping Today Podcast as a host.

Dr. Meghan Milbrath: Thank you for having me back as a host and for letting me in the studio.

Becky: Isn't this great?

Meghan: Absolutely.

Becky: We can sneak in any time now. I'm really excited to have you here today because our guest is a doctor of veterinary medicine, and we just had you on the podcast. Your eyes lit up and you smiled big when we started talking about veterinary medicine. Can you remind our listeners why you think it's so important that bees have vets?

Meghan: Yes. Part of the reason is because they need to work with veterinarians in order to get a prescription or veterinary feed directive so they can access antibiotics when they have bacterial disease. The other reason is because honeybees are animals and we need as many people as possible with as many different backgrounds to help take care of their health. Having the veterinarians on board to deal with all of the veterinary health issues with honeybees is going to be fantastic.

Becky: I remember you talking about how important both disease monitoring, disease management, and biosecurity is, and then also how important vet techs can be in the whole puzzle. We are going to talk to Dr. Eva Reinicke, a doctor of veterinary medicine here in Minnesota with me, not really with me, but she also has something in common with you because her practice is in Northfield. Do you know that town?

Meghan: I do. I spent a lot of time there drinking lots of coffee and reading lots of books when I went to St. Olaf College. I'm actually really thrilled to get to talk with her.

Becky: It's pretty exciting. The other part I think that's important when it comes to veterinary medicine and honeybees is what you hinted at, but the fact is that our bees need so much help and they're in such a health crisis. I feel like this was your secret plan because you've actually written-- at least you've gotten one major grant and I'm guessing it's more, to work on this.

Meghan: Yes, we've gotten two grants. We've been funded through the Veterinary Services Grant Program through NIFA, and then also through the SARE program, so the Sustainable Ag Research Education, also through USDA. We've gotten quite a bit of funding to work with both veterinarians, veterinary technicians, and then also veterinary students, which I'm very excited about.

Becky: And I know that you are doing this because you're collaborating with somebody at the University of Minnesota, Dr. Katie Lee, who's the extension educator in apiculture. That's how I actually met Dr. Eva Reinicke. It's a small world.

Meghan: Yes. Hopefully, it will be a growing world, but at the moment, Katie and I are involved in doing hands-on clinics, online education materials. Then one of the things I'm really excited to talk to Dr. Reineke about is externships, which is a different word for basically an internship for students, but providing hands-on experience for veterinary students in the field.

Becky: Well, we have so much to talk to her about. Luckily she is in our lobby waiting to be let in. I'm really looking forward to talking to her. Before we talk to her, let's hear from Strong Microbials.

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Becky: While you're at the Strong Microbials site, make sure you click and subscribe to  The Hive, their regular newsletter full of interesting beekeeping facts and product updates. Welcome back to the show. I'm so happy to introduce Dr. Eva Reinicke. Eva, welcome to the show.

Dr. Eva Reinicke: Thank you so much. It's an honor to be here.

Becky: We were just talking about how you and Meghan have something in common. She has a tie to Northfield. That is where you are right now, correct?

Eva: Yes, correct. That's where I've been living for the last seven years.

Becky: You're a doctor of veterinary medicine. I'm going to let you introduce yourselves to our listeners.

Eva: Sure. My name is Eva Reinicke. I'm a graduate of the University of Minnesota in 2016. I've been practicing honeybee medicine since 2018. I first was actually interested in that in veterinary school when I did a twinning program with some students from Thailand. They had a lot of education on honeybees. Then as a first year out of vet school, I was invited to look at some bees and was pretty excited to go out and see the bees for a commercial beekeeper.

Little did I know I was getting into things over my head, but they were very kind. I feel like beekeepers in general are just really great people. They gave me their best bee suit, which was about three times too big. They took me out to all their colonies and showed me around and that's how I got into it.

Becky: When you first saw a colony, was it an immediate, "I got to do more of this"?

Eva: Yes, I was pretty excited. We had a few lectures from the bee lab actually when we were in school. That was a little bit unusual because of this twinning program. I just remember learning about fat bodies and bees and just being like, "Wait, what? This is so cool. They're similar to livers in animals." I was just really captured by it.

Meghan: You're a beekeeper now, but you didn't get into bees until you started through veterinary medicine?

Eva: Yes, that's right. I started in medicine and I quickly realized that there were a lot of things that I didn't know and a lot of experiences I couldn't really understand because I hadn't had my own bees. I got into bees in the end of 2018, I think. Some of my friends here in Northfield sold me some bees and I kept a few colonies, and it's really grown since then. I've really enjoyed it. I get a ton out of it. I would say almost-- I've learned a lot of management strategies on other people's bees, but the day-to-day looking at bees and looking for illness and looking for health and knowing the process and the yearly changes have all come from working on my own bees.

Becky: One of the things that I think is funny was when I first met Eva, I was walking behind you while we were, I think, on the way to the apiary and you were explaining to a veterinary student how bees are just like cats because they reproduce so easily. I just thought that was so funny because most beekeepers do not say that because most beekeepers struggle, especially if they're new, to keep their bees alive. I thought, "Oh my gosh, she's really good at this because her bees keep reproducing."

Eva: I don't know about that. I have been pretty successful, but it's been a lot of trial and error too. I definitely have my challenges. There's times of year when I go out into the bees and I just look at everybody and I'm like, "Oh no, we're not seeing what I want to see." I think over the years I've learned that that can be very seasonal. It changes a lot with nutrition, changes a lot with the status of what time of year it is. I will admit I still struggle with Varroa mites and viruses. Meghan and I have had some conversations about European foulbrood. I'm not exempt to all of the concerns that other beekeepers have for sure.

Meghan: You said you graduated in 2016, and you had a couple of lectures while you were at vet school with bees and then the twinning thing. Was that the only thing that it was in your curriculum at the time?

Eva: Correct. That was actually even a special curriculum. It was through our public health class. I took advanced public health, so that gave us an extra week of public health, and because we did the twinning program with Thailand, they studied these much more extensively than we did. That curriculum was added just for the people in my rotation.

Meghan: How do you define yourself as a vet? Are you small animal or production or do you have a specialty or anything like that?

Eva: I'm really lucky because the veterinary field is really diverse. Even within the field, you can move around a lot. I actually graduated vet school wanting to be a dairy veterinarian, focusing much more on production, animal medicine, herd health, overseeing farming, and not necessarily at an animal level but at a herd level. I think that's really helped me in beekeeping have that perspective.

I started in Wisconsin in dairy medicine, got the opportunity to do quite a bit of equine work there. Equine work in general is a little bit more animal-specific. Then when I moved to Northfield, I got a job here working for an equine vet, and we did 99% of our cases are horses. Still large animal, but it is viewed a little bit differently.

Meghan: Do you take your beekeeping cases through that practice, or do you do it completely on your own?

Eva: I do it completely on my own. I have my own practice set up, so beekeepers can contact me directly. It's just a little bit easier that way. I have insurance set up for myself and for the practice. Then that doesn't have to be part of the practice that I work for.

Meghan: Then you took your first client, the 2018, you had a commercial beekeeper reach out to you. Is that how that started or--

Eva: My first client was in Wisconsin when I still worked there. That was the summer of 2016.

Meghan: 2016. Okay. Even before the veterinary feed directive requirement.

Eva: Correct. That started in 2017, January.

Meghan: People from Wisconsin are very ahead of everything.

Becky: Did I mention where Meghan's from?

[laughter]

Meghan: It's like literally eating--

Becky: That's a shout-out to Wisconsin beekeepers, right?

Meghan: I was eating cheese right before this call. Then when did you start actively soliciting beekeeping clients?

Eva: That was when I was here in Northfield. I came to do the equine practice and then started the beekeeping on the side and the bee veterinary practice on the side.

Becky: I want to back up because in your own operation, you also mentioned you're also raising queens. Are you selling a few nucs each year too?

Eva: I don't sell any nucs. I use them for replacements. I guess I'm a veterinarian at heart. I'm a nervous beekeeper, and I just don't like the idea of giving somebody a colony that might not be perfectly healthy, and so I've just kept them in my own apiary. I might eventually try that. My passion is more in raising queens and watching them go and mate and come back and create these beautiful colonies. I'm less passionate about sales.

Becky: You're not selling queens or bees. You're 100% a bee doctor and a beekeeper.

Eva: Correct.

Becky: Okay.

Meghan: You said you started taking beekeeping clients in 2016, but I feel like there's been a ton of education on both beekeepers and vets since then. Has it gotten-- I guess what's changed, for both you and the beekeepers, from between when you were taking those first clients and how you are working with beekeepers now in 2023?

Eva: I think there has been a positive change. There's more veterinarians that are willing to work with bees and know about bees now than there were in 2016, 2017. I think the thing that is still a little bit intimidating is that large animal veterinarians are a little bit less likely to take on bee clients, I think just because of how their day is scheduled, and especially if we're talking about hobby keepers. A lot of those clients usually fall to mixed practices or small animal veterinarians.

The thing that's really intimidating to small animal veterinarians about production medicine is you have to be really careful about your antibiotic use and making sure that you educate everybody on the appropriate withdrawal time. That can be a concern for your license if you don't do it correctly. I think that step itself-- I know some small animal veterinarians that are just not comfortable taking that extra step.

Meghan: Are you mostly dealing with clients that need antibiotics or do you do other management or Varroa consulting or things like that as well, or have you stuck so far to the antibiotic route?

Eva: Most clients that I see know that they have a problem. A lot of them have already tested. They either know that they have EFB or they have AFB. Sometimes they actually come through the bee squad and they do a really great job of educating. I've had some clients that are newer beekeepers that just want me to come out and have a look and do some Varroa checks and just do some testing if they think they're seeing something strange. I would say the vast majority of them already know what they're dealing with.

Becky: Do the demand for your services spans very specific times in the season, or are you being consistently recruited out to look at bees?

Eva: I would say it definitely is more spring, especially when people first get in their bees. I think there's some concern. Then going through June, July, I don't get a lot of calls in the autumn, although I have gotten some. Sometimes those people on occasion, they'll get a negative test on something and then they'll retest in the fall and realize that they have that. For most of them, I'm seeing them in the spring.

Becky: That's really difficult to run a business where everybody needs you at the exact same time. We had talked to Meghan a few weeks ago on the show, and she brought up the power potentially of vet techs. Have you brought anybody into your practice who can help you?

Eva: I haven't so far. Full disclosure, I still work a full-time job primarily with more traditional animals. I have brought techs out to the field with me to help and work in my own bees as more of an educational thing that they want to come along, but I haven't specifically brought people with to bees that need treatment.

Becky: I would think that eventually there's going to be a need for you to scale up because as you said, the directive is new. Beekeepers are still understanding the importance of it. I assume at a certain point you're going to get very busy. Would you do the vet tech or would you bring on another potential veterinarian into your practice? Have you thought about this? I'm all about growing a business.

Eva: Yes. I think a vet tech would be a great first step just because they can help a lot with the technical portion of things. They could help me do washes and sample collection and stuff like that. Bringing another veterinarian on is challenging because you really need to have enough workload to keep both of you busy. Yes, the first step would definitely be to hire a vet tech.

Meghan: You mentioned the dairy medicine, and that's one of the examples that I use all the time because they're food-producing animals kept in herds. Are there any examples of how a dairy vet could work like a dairy vet in honeybee medicine? I'm not sure if that's explained well enough, but you mentioned a lot of people are dealing with, or a lot of the calls are coming from, small animal vets, people who their bees are more their pets. I'm really interested in a large beekeeper, could hire a veterinarian or have their techs come out similar like they do with a herd for dairy medicine. What would that look like, and does that feel feasible or more on the side of honeybee vets as production medicine?

Eva: I absolutely think that's possible. I do think it would probably entail a lot of traveling because bees travel a lot. A lot of our commercial apiaries move around, but I think that would be an excellent option to have commercial beekeepers have a veterinarian either as a retainer or just hire us to come out and pay hourly. It would be very similar to going over a herd. The thing that's a little bit more challenging in beekeeping is that we don't have the extensive record system that dairy medicine does.

They have just a wealth of data that's produced from all the RFID tags, and they collect a lot of information and they can analyze that information statistically very easily. That's become a lot of what dairy veterinarians do. It almost seems like in bee medicine, we could definitely go out and we could help collect that data, and we could eventually crunch the numbers, but the collection would be quite time-consuming.

Meghan: Yes, and that's where I think the techs can play a huge role. There also are some pretty cool apps, but that is really interesting to think about how much more data is available, especially nowadays, for dairy. You mentioned needing to charge for travel and needing to charge your cost per visit. How did you determine your costs, or how did you determine what to charge and what you needed to do, and did you have support for that, or did you just do it?

Eva: Well, I had some experience with the equine industry, which probably maybe isn't the best financial model.

Meghan: Of course, bee people are not usually-- sometimes there's overlap, but--

Eva: The equine industry, it's an interesting place. Based on that, I also worked the mixed animal job and knew where things, as far as cost-wise, lie. I also don't really want to charge somebody a lot of money to come out and spend some time in their bees. I want it to be a reasonable cost. I'd like to make a little bit of money doing it, but I also don't feel like it's something that I'm going to need to sustain my career on at this point. I wanted to make it fair. To be honest, in 2017, when the VFD was coming out, gosh, we heard a lot of complaints. I wanted to have people feel like I was available, and could be reached. I set that cost at something that I felt was a fair balance.

Meghan: That's really nice to hear. That's the way we're talking to a lot of our students is not necessarily that being a bee vet is the entirety of your career, but it's a second income or something that you're doing as a supplemental income to your regular practice.

Becky: I'm going to take a step back for the listeners who might not be familiar with the Veterinary Feed Directive. I know either of you have this, but will one of you just give us a simple summary of the 2017 directive?

Eva: Yes. In 2017, the Veterinary Feed Directive came out, which stipulated that in order to get antibiotics that could be fed and feed to food-producing animals, you had to have a veterinary client-patient relationship. That usually means that a veterinary needs to come out to your premise, needs to examine some of the animals, have knowledge of the production process, and have a good understanding of what the animals need before they can prescribe antibiotics. Most of those Veterinary Feed Directives, they last for six months. You can treat a group of animals within that timeframe one time under one Veterinary Feed Directive.

Meghan: Just to add to that, and the change in 2017 wasn't designed for honeybees. It was for all food-producing animals that use antibiotics that are medically important to humans. Honeybees and aquaculture got caught up in the net for everything else because they technically fit that definition. Now it means that there's veterinarians involved also because you could write a Veterinary Feed Directive, which is one way to provide antibiotics, but a veterinarian can also write a prescription, which is another way to provide antibiotics where the beekeeper picks them up at a pharmacy.

Those can be a little different, but it basically means that you can't get antibiotics without veterinarian involvement anymore, or food medically important to antibiotics. Things that are technically antibiotics like fumagillin, you can still get because those aren't available to humans.

Becky: One of the things I like about both having you here, Meghan, and you here, Eva, is that it could have been looked at as just a problem or a big obstacle to the industry, the beekeeping industry because all of a sudden there was a gate up and beekeepers couldn't do business as usual. As Meghan said earlier when we were chatting before you joined us, this is a great opportunity for honeybee health to be improved by bringing veterinarians into the care, bringing trained professionals into who are very good at understanding sick animals and diagnosing illness, to bring them into beekeeping. You jumped right in and put on a really big bee suit and you were willing to go ahead and get started. You invested in it. You started a business. I think you two are a great combination to really what is going to be the future of honeybee health and relationships with veterinarians.

Meghan: Thank you. It would have been awesome if there were 200 more people like Eva too that took it because there was a huge break in availability for antibiotics and the bacterial diseases are just running rampant. We would never let bacterial diseases get that high-- those rates get that high in any other animal system. Then to make it even harder to get antibiotics in the middle of that is really hard. It would have been even better if we had a ton of people that were excited to dive in, or we had a bunch of education going on before they made the changes to it.

Eva: Yes, I agree. One of the, I guess, reasons I wanted to get into having my own bees is, when I first started learning a little bit more about honeybees and the losses that they were having, it was hard for me to believe, people losing 50% of their hives or more. I think it's so unrealistic if you think of any other industry. Think of the beef industry. If they lost 50% of their cattle every year, it would be huge.

I was having a hard time understanding how that was possible for beekeepers until you start keeping bees, and you see all the challenges that you're faced with and the disease and the wintering loss. I guess I'd love to see a few more changes to help beekeepers out and just sound the alarm for why are we struggling so much when other industries have a lot more funding and a lot more information out there to help support them? I think beekeepers should have the same.

Meghan: Was there anything specific when you talk about seeing changes? Name names.

Eva: I know. I would love to see more research-- oh my gosh, so much more research. One of the things that I really struggle with is a lot of the other industries have so much support and input from manufacturers. Zoetis is a huge supporter of cattle and swine things. They end up doing a lot of work themselves, doing a lot of research. I think the bee industry has these small niche areas that are working for them, but gosh, it would be really interesting to see if larger stakeholders could get involved. I'd also love to see a little bit more support from the government to be honest. Funding is huge and they do have a lot of other funding for other food-producing industries. That would be one--

Meghan: Exactly. Like you say, the responses that you normally see in health crises and other animals in other industries is much larger.

Eva: Yes, absolutely.

Becky: This is a great time to take a quick break, and we're going to be right back with Dr. Eva Reinicke.

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Becky: Welcome back. We're here with Dr. Eva Reinicke.

Meghan: One of the things that I'm really excited to talk to you about is your work with veterinary students. I'm working with Katie Lee at Minnesota to talk about opportunities we can have for students to get more hands-on training at MSU and at University of Minnesota. Do you want to maybe talk about what you've done with externships or taking students or giving students more hands-on opportunities?

Eva: Yes. This started during COVID when a lot of the student clubs were unable to get speakers. We started doing these Zoom speakers and students from UW Madison and the University of Minnesota reached out to me and asked if I would do a lecture on bees because they were looking for somebody who had information on a lot of-- it was for a exotics club or exotic animal club. I started doing those Zoom meetings and met some students through that. They contacted me privately over email and said, "Hey, we're really interested in this topic because we'd love to come out. Are there weekends? Are there times where we could do this?"

I proposed that they come during their fourth year as an externship. In veterinary study, during the fourth year, you have a few rotations where you can choose to study whatever you'd like. That would be going to a practice that you love or doing research or-- it's really up to you. They signed up to come in June-- end of May, beginning of June, and do a two-week rotation here in Northfield with me. It was really fun. I set up a bunch of activities.

We went out and looked at pretty much all the bee yards of my friends. We have a local bee group here. We went to see some sick bees. I showed them how to use the ELISA tests. We did mite washes and mite treatments and covered just a lot of things. I actually also showed them a little bit about queen rearing, and we did some grafting together, got some nucs ready, did a little bit of work, I think even maybe, with you, Becky, up at the University of Minnesota. I don't know if you were there during that stint.

Becky: I don't think I was. I was only there once-

Eva: When was this?

Becky: -about a couple of months ago.

Eva: Okay. I think they followed the bee squad around for a little while.

Becky: Yes, that was probably after I resigned. That sounds serious. After I retired.

Meghan: You got kicked out?

Becky: I know. That sounds like there was a scandal. After I retired from the bee squad. [laughs]

Eva: Yes. That was really fun. Then we had some lectures. There's a virologist at the University of Minnesota who's really into bees, Dr. Declan Schroeder. He gave us a private lecture about bee viruses and went over some of the research that he's done. He showed us his lab. That was really exciting. That was the externship. I've worked with students just here and there as well. I had a girl that came down, boy, I don't have the best memory for timelines, but I want to say in 2019. She wanted to take some samples on bee-- Dr. Declan Schroeder was interested in Sacbrood virus because we'd been seeing a lot of it here in the Northfield area.

She came down and we took a bunch of samples from some of my bee colonies because I was pretty sure that I was seeing it here. We brought those samples up to Declan and the student and him ran them through the new gene sequencer, which is just this incredible wealth of information. If we had the money to do that, we would have so much knowledge. I thought it was just impressive. It's a technology where basically we're taking swabs of the brood. Any disease brood that we're finding, we're swabbing that. Then you put it into this machine and it spits out all of the sequencing DNA that is available in that sample.

You get bee DNA. We got viruses associated with white clover as part of it because it was on the pollen. We got Sacbrood virus. We got all these other viruses associated with bees. I think we got something really exciting to Declan because he was like, "Oh, I could totally write a paper about this, and we could publish this." He was really excited about it. For me, it was really interesting information because my bees did have quite a bit of Sacbrood. I was trying to think in a perfect world, I could have followed that up with really trying to figure out, is this a secondary problem or is this a primary problem? It was really a lot of information all at once.

I know right now the swine industry has used that new gene sequencing to get just so much information, kind of the same thing, do our pigs have circovirus, or is the circovirus underlying some other problem, and that's why it's popping up? I think if we could use that in beekeeping to get more information on, is European foulbrood a primary problem or is this just happening with nutrition? Is it being passed all around? Oh man, the possibilities are endless if we could get a little more information on that.

Unfortunately, it's quite expensive to run all those samples. Really at this point, just something in research. I know Dr. Schroeder, one of his primary things was trying to find some technology that's more affordable that could be used in beekeeping.

Becky: Dr. Schroeder got really excited about our biosecurity measures at the University of Minnesota. We thought we were doing really well until a virologist takes a look.

Eva: Yes. It's a frightening concept when a virologist looks into that because it's amazing how organisms work.

Becky: We just had to tell him, "We just can't throw everything away. It doesn't work like that." [laughs] It is. That just goes to show you that when you have people who are specialists take a look at your problem, they give you really good perspective.

Eva: Yes, I think that's really important. One of the things though that I think beekeepers struggle with that some other industries, they're sharing equipment and stuff like that between other industries, but there's good ways of sanitizing it. We have technology. There's a little instrument that can read how many bacteria there are per sample for calf barns measuring whether or not things have been cleaned appropriately. In beekeeping, we're odd because we use so much of our equipment in and around other colonies. Beekeepers are always combining colonies. They're always taking nucs off, reusing comb.

Unfortunately, again, I didn't understand that until I got into bees how much you move things around. Actually, when I first started, I tried to start with a fairly strict protocol on equipment because I wanted to try to track-- let's try to keep this equipment in this yard, these hive tools in this yard. I ended up marking all of my hive bodies and all of my frames and they were all color-coded.

That was the first year. Now, if I look at my apiary now, I can tell I got these two purple frames from this yard and then these two red frames came from this other yard and then they're now combined into this colony. The amount of combining, I think, in the bee industry is a little bit different. It's not an all-in, all-out protocol the way that a lot of food production is. That's a special challenge.

Becky: Also, you can't take one leg from a horse and put it on another horse, but you can take some frames out of a colony and put them into another colony.

Meghan: Yes, that way that herd health mentality and disease control, that becomes so much more important or equally important as the individual animal health too.

Eva: Then you have to also factor in that bees, you can't put them behind a fence. You can't keep them isolated from their flying distance is really the only way. If you are practicing perfect protocol and people two miles down the road or not, that does affect you. That's an additional challenge that some animal food industry does have to deal with things like that. I know the swine industry deals with PRRS all the time that can travel on air and food and stuff like that. I would love to see some more information out there as far as trying to get more research on how these things move.

Becky: I want to make sure that we talk about-- you both have hinted at it, but right now we don't have a lot of veterinarians who are actually dedicated or have a small practice or at least able to take beekeepers as clients. Do what the numbers look like across the country? Is it getting better?

Eva: I don't know specifically. I've had a few people reach out to me and ask about how I set up my practice and what expectations and what gear I needed and things like that. I think I just mostly hear through the grapevine, especially this localized area. I couldn't tell you anything about Texas or Florida or Georgia or California.

Meghan: We did send out a survey as the first objective for the grants that we're on, but we're still sending it out and getting more responses actively. I don't know exactly how many people are out there that are-- We've asked them if they're willing to take clients or if they have taken clients. I definitely think it's changing for the better, especially since there's more resources where people can ask somebody who's already taken clients or look things up so that they can feel like they can provide care without risking their license. I think, for me, it always felt like it was much worse than it was because I was always getting the calls from the beekeepers who couldn't find a vet.

The cases where it just works well and you call your vet and they just help you out with what you need, I don't really hear about those as much. Before I started talking to more vets, I was doomsday. I'm like, "Where the heck are these people, and why aren't they helping?" Now that I'm actually talking to more, they're like, "Oh, yes, I called my vet and they just prescribed for me what I needed," or, "I was able to get a hold of them." There are some happy stories in there too. For me, it's been nicer to talk to more people because I think I'm getting a more balanced view, and probably it is getting better too.

Becky: Is there a website that has this information, or people on their own in each state to find a veterinarian?

Eva: The Honey Bee Veterinary Consortium is the best.

Becky: Okay. We can put that in the show now.

Meghan: Yes, the Honey Bee Veterinary Consortium. There aren't very many vets listed. One of the things that would be really useful is for people to list themselves, but that one is the national one.

Eva: The other thing that's a little bit of a struggle with that is that you do have to pay to be part of that consortium, and you have to do that annually. I think as veterinarians we just eventually forget to re-register for that.

Becky: It would be great if beekeepers who are listening who actually have a bee veterinarian, they could encourage them to maybe register on that site. I think we could stay here all afternoon and talk to you, Eva, but we better let you go because I'm guessing you have either some bees to go see or maybe some animals.

Eva: Yes.

Becky: Did we miss anything? Is there anything you wanted to share with us before we say goodbye?

Eva: Nicole I don't think so. I just really appreciate getting to chat with everyone. As far as a message to veterinarians out there, if they're listening to this, I just really encourage people to get some information, but don't hesitate to do this because it's really beneficial to beekeepers. It's actually really rewarding as well. It's fun to be out in the field and seeing bees. It's definitely worthwhile.

Becky: Thank you, Eva. Thank you, Meghan.

Meghan: Thank you.

Becky: This has been a lot of fun.

Eva: Thank you.

Becky: Meghan, that was such a great discussion with Eva. My guess is that during that discussion, you probably thought of a few different ideas for grant writing.

Meghan: Yes, absolutely. I have a whole list, and I think maybe you heard me typing at the beginning. I had a whole list that she was talking about, just ways that we can incorporate things we've learned from veterinary medicine into honeybee research. I was very inspired both by the ideas that she brought up, and then also just her dedication to helping future students and bringing in more veterinarians into honeybees.

Becky: It's hard sometimes to be optimistic about honeybee health and its future, but conversations like these give me a lot of hope.

Meghan: Me too, exactly.

Jeff: That about wraps it up for this episode. Before we go, I want to encourage our listeners to follow us and rate us five stars on Apple Podcasts, wherever you download and stream the show. Even better, write a review and let other beekeepers looking for a new podcast know what you like. You can get there directly from our website by clicking on the reviews along the top of any web page.

We want to thank our regular episode sponsors, Better Bee, Global Patty, Strong Microbials, and Northern Bee Books for their generous support. Finally, and most importantly, we want to thank you, the  Beekeeping Todaypodcast listener for joining us on this show. Feel free to leave us questions and comments at the leave a comment section under each episode on the website. We'd love to hear from you. Thanks a lot, everybody.

[00:42:45] [END OF AUDIO]