The Tennessee Beekeepers Association hosted its annual fall conference Saturday
, • October 11, 2025
(Photo: Bailey Lowe)
The Tennessee Honeybee Association’s table at their annual fall conference in the Student Union on Oct. 10, 2025.
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The conference engaged students, local gardeners and the broader community in supporting the fuzzy pollinators, while vendors sold bee-related merchandise, offered honey-tasting sessions and provided opportunities and information for both new and experienced beekeepers.
Speakers focused on the challenges faced by the world’s primary pollinators and how beekeepers and bee enthusiasts can contribute to their support. Speakers from the beekeeping association addressed key threats during the event, like parasites, habitat loss, pesticide exposure and climate stress.
“Honey bees are important because they pollinate everything that we eat,” Ron Coleman, an event volunteer, said.
Coleman, a beekeeper, has been coming to the conference for 17 years and appreciates how bees help the environment and keep crops pollinated.
“We can’t really live without the honey bee,” Coleman said.
One of the headline speakers, Tammy Horn Potter, hosted a presentation on Varroa mites, presented on behalf of Project Apis m, a program that funds research and helps promote the health of honeybees.
Varroa mites pose as one of the most potent threats to honeybee survival.The mite was identified as the most destructive problem affecting honeybees in Tennessee due to its ability to weaken individual bees and spread disease within colonies, according to the USDA. Experts demonstrated that monitoring and mitigation practices can help beekeepers avoid infestations.
“Those types of bugs plant themselves on the honey bee, and it lessens their health, and without good health, they cannot make it through the winter,” Colman said. “It’s our job as beekeepers to help manage environmental things as well as these things that can negatively impact the honey bee.”
Honey bees also encounter challenges in forest landscapes and when exposed to pesticides that kill off flowering plants. Without flowering plants, bees can starve or become malnourished.
Summer Miller, a senior at MTSU and secretary of MTSU’s Bee Club, echoed the importance of pollinators in our daily lives.
“If we don’t have bees, we don’t have a lot of crops, and those crops play a big part of our lives,” Miller said.
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