The goal of the Centre for Bee Ecology, Evolution and Conservation (BEEc)'s Speaker Series is to provide opportunities for BEEc associates and invited guests to learn from each other. We are pleased to announce that starting Fall 2024, this series will be open to the public. If you miss the live webinar, we often are able to record presentations for others to view - please see below for those recordings, or subscribe to our YouTube Channel to receive the most up-to-date notifications on new recordings!
At 11am Eastern Time, on the second or third Friday of every month, we will feature a different topic related to bees. These will be presented through the Zoom webinar platform, you will need to register individually for each webinar in the series
February 21st, 2025
Dr. Nadia Tsvetkov

Dr. Nadia Tsvetkov
Nadia is a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of British Columbia in Dr. Leoanrd Foster's lab. She completed her PhD and her Master's degrees both with distinction at York University under the supervision of Dr. Amro Zayed. She has received an NSERC PDF award and she published in prestigious journals, including the journal Science. Her research on honey bee health and behaviour received wide media attention and impacted government policy.
Please join us for her talk: "Quantitative Behavioral Analysis - lessons from "big data" " in February!
Register here
March 21st, 2025
Dr. Monika Egerer

Dr. Monika Egerer
Monika is a professor for Urban Productive Ecosystems in the School of Life Sciences at the Technical University of Munich.
Originally from Southeast Michigan, USA she studied biology at Kalamazoo College where she developed a strong interest in ecology, conservation, agriculture and the environment. She received a PhD in Environmental Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Please join us for her talk: "How urban community gardens can support wild pollinators – from research to practice" in March!
Register here
April 13th, 2025
Dr. Matthias Becher

Matthias is an ecologist with a background in biology, having studied at the Universities of Heidelberg and Würzburg in Germany. He completed his PhD at the University of Halle-Wittenberg, focusing on the division of labor in honeybees, before working as a postdoc at Rothamsted Research and the University of Exeter, where he helped develop the BEEHAVE and Bumble-BEEHAVE models for pollinator dynamics. He also held fellowships at The Fields Institute in Toronto and the University of Oxford, focusing on bee and solitary bee modelling. From 2020-2022, he worked on smart hives and robotics at the University of Graz, Austria. Since 2022, he has been an Ecological Modeler at Rifcon, Germany.
Please join us for his talk: "Agent-based modelling of social bees and its application" in April!
Register here
Join our Public "Bees" ListServ!
Looking to stay informed on BEEc's public news, general, research activities and events? Send an email to LISTSERV@YORKU.CA with the following command in the body of the email:
SUBSCRIBE BEES YourFirstName YourLastName
Join our Internal "BEEc-Associates" ListServ!
Are you on our Internal BEEc Associates Listserv? This list is used for sharing our newsletters, upcoming events and opportunities. If you are not a Member of BEEc already, please contact beec@yorku.ca.
Scroll down for Past Presentations, Videos of Selected Presentations
Keep scrolling down the page to see the list of past presentations and recordings (where permissions were given for public posting). Or visit our YouTube Channel to see the recordings from all our speaker series, webinars, conferences.
Past events:
2024-2025 Speaker Series Events
September 13th 2024: Teasing apart stressor interactions in honey bee workers and queens: Nothing is ever easy with Dr. Adam Dolezal.

October 11th 2024: The fascinating world of bees: from novel monitoring tools to landscape-level stressors with Dr. Laura Figueroa (Recording will not be made public until results are published).
November 8th 2024: The Calculus of Honey Bees with Dr. Matthew Betti.

December 13th 2024: Jan Dzierżon's Revolution in Honey-Bee Biology with Dr. Christopher Starr (No Recording Available)
January 10th 2025: Global change and pollinator conservation with Dr. Olivia Bernauer.
2023-2024 Speaker Series Events





2022-2023 Speaker Series Events

September 16, 2022: Systems biology of complex phenotypes, with Dr. Syed Abbas Bukhari (No Recording Available)
October 21, 2022: Evolution of sociality and parental care in Ceratina bees, with Dr. Michael Mikát

November 18, 2022: Honey bee exposure to multi-stressor landscapes, with Dr. Sarah French (No Recording Available)
December 16, 2022: Metagenomics and metatranscriptomics of small carpenter bees (Ceratina calcarata), with Dr. Katherine Chau
January 13, 2023: The Evolution of Bee Brood Parasitism, with Dr. Trevor Sless
February 17, 2023: Effects of dune stabilization on bees and aculeate wasps in the southern Canadian prairies, with Dr. Tom Onuferko

March 17, 2023: The evolution of protein soup in male ejaculate, with Dr. Bahar Patlar. (Note: recording will not be made public until results discussed are published).
April 14, 2023: Solutions for Farmers and Food for Bees : From knowledge on bee nutrition to actions promoting bee conservation, with Dr. Mathilde Tissier
2021-2022 Speaker Series Events
The talks below were those where the speakers gave us permission to record and share their presentations. We thank the other speakers who shared their knowledge with us as well.
April 1, 2022: Rare Plants in Southern Ontario's Woodlands: Where Are They, What Limits Them and Who Pollinates Them?
with Dr. Jenny McCune, Assistant Professor, University of Lethbridge - view the poster
March 4, 2022: The Role of Heterogeneity in supporting Wild Bee Biodiversity in Canadian Agroecosystems
with Dr. Jess Vickruck, Research Scientist, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada - view the poster
Dec 3, 2021: Recommendations for Canada's First National Pollinator Strategy
with Dr. Rachel Napela, York University - view the poster
Nov 5, 2021: Bees, Math, & Collaborations
with Drs. Jane Heffernan and Amro Zayed, York University - view the poster
Oct 1, 2021: Early Insecticide Controversies and Beekeeper Advocacy in the Great Lakes Region
with Dr. Jennifer Bonnell, York University - view the poster
Summer 2021 - Beyond the Buzz: Examining Bees Through an Interdisciplinary Lens
Bees, People, Science & Others
- July 9, 2021 with Kathleen Law, Pollinator Partnership Canada, and Dr. Clement Kent, York University - view the poster
Bees, Land & Food Justice
- June 4, 2021 with Dr. Sheila Colla, York University, Adrianne Lickers Xavier, McMaster University, Dr. Sarah Rotz, York University - view the poster