Charlotte Ekker Wiggins

Author, Master Gardner

Charlotte Ekker Wiggins is a lifelong gardener and now master gardener emeritus. She added bees to her Missouri limestone hillside garden, where neighbors said nothing would grow, in 2010. Bluebird Gardens is now a Monarch Way Station, Certified Wildlife Habitat, award-winning garden and working apiary.

Charlotte has a master's degree in management from Webster University in St. Louis and has established a dozen educational non-profits since 1979, including a bee club in 2014. In 2015, she helped change Missouri's honey labelling laws and was awarded a Missouri State Beekeeping Association Beekeeper of the Year Award. She is a contributing author and on the Steering Committee for Missouri’s Master Pollinator Steward program, an award-winning program about the value of pollinators.

She currently serves on the Missourians for Monarchs Collaborative, some 150 state and federal agencies working together to increase pollinator habitat. She is also Missouri State Beekeepers Association partnership liaison, working with Great Plains Master Beekeeping to bring a certified master beekeeping program to Missouri. She was tapped to be the military representative for Missouri's Heroes to Hives' chapter, teaching military veterans beekeeping.

In 2019, she was selected to discuss “Why Bugs Matter” at an April 2019 Missouri S&T TEDx.
Charlotte continues to teach classes, lecture and write on a variety of beekeeping-related topics.

Books or articles (and TEDx)

1. "A Beekeeper's Diary Self-Guide to Beekeeping"
Available paperback and ebook at many book outlets

2. "Bee Club Basics or How to Start a Bee Club"
Available paperback from Amazon

3. "Tips on Running Bee Club"
February 2021 Bee Culture Magazine

4. Missouri S&T TEDx "Why Bugs Matter" April 2019.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUUTYdMrBlM

5. Missouri Master Pollinator Steward Program:
https://extension.missouri.edu/programs/master-pollinator-steward/about-the-mps-program