Join us on August 13th, 2020 at 7PM for our always popular “Ask the Experts” meeting.  Randall Austin, Chris Apple, and David Eckert will put their heads together to answer your beekeeping questions.  Come prepared with your latest beekeeping questions, and they will provide answers, or at least offer three different opinions on what might be going on! 

 Randall Austin has been keeping bees since 2005.  He did clinical research at GlaxoSmithKline (and its predecessors) for 27 years before he retired.  Prior to that he was an Economist in the electric utility industry in DC and Atlanta. Randall has served many roles in OCBA and NCSBA including OCBA Education Director and Bee School Headmaster, OCBA Master Beekeeper Program Coordinator, supporting OCBA Clusters and Collaboratives, NCSBA Regional Director (Piedmont), and occasional contributor to NCSBA’s “Bee Buzz” quarterly. 

 Chris Apple has been keeping bees for ~8 years.  She retired after working at Duke for 44 years as a clinical laboratory scientist.  She has served in many roles in OCBA and NCSBA including co-president (2 years), executive board (4 years), outreach coordinator (3 years), cluster leader (several years), co-led the Master Beekeeper Class, instructed students in the OCBA Bee School, contributes to the Bee Buzz, serves on the NCSBA Master Beekeeping Program Committee, NCSBA Regional Director for 5 chapters, and chairs the NCSBA 4-H Committee. 

 David Eckert has been keeping bees since 2009, and is the Director of Managed IT Services at UNC Chapel Hill. He has contributed to OCBA in many roles including OCBA Mentoring Director, Hillsborough Cluster leader for several years, co-lead the Study Group for the NCSBA Master Beekeeper Program and Advanced Beekeeping, conducted multiple Honey Extraction workshops, co-hosted multiple beekeeping equipment workshops for the OCBA Bee School.