Beekeeping Bootcamp 2025

Meet our bee experts:

Lorna McCallister is a biologist from Tampa, Florida. She studied wildlife biology with a minor in entomology at the University of Florida. She also completed her master’s degree at the University of Florida with a thesis on insect and avian pollinator communities in southern Africa. She learned beekeeping through a course at UF, the Tampa Bay Beekeepers Association, and interning with Butterfly Pavilion’s Bees for Elephants Project in Sri Lanka and Kenya. Francisco completed a B.S. in Biology from the National Autonomous University of Mexico in 2017. He then completed a PhD on Entomology at the University of Sydney, Australia in 2021. Francisco’s main areas of research have been breeding, husbandry, reproductive behavior, and management of bees. He has successfully published six scientific papers on bee’s biology on peer reviewed journals. During his PhD, Francisco also worked with schools, universities, refugees, beekeepers and senior adults delivering science communication workshops with the aim of promoting environmental and sustainability in urban environments by teaching the importance of insects and their habitats in Australia. He was also the manager of a stingless bee program run by tone of the councils in Sydney where he managed and propagated over 100 colonies of stingless bees every year. After finishing his PhD and before the Butterfly Pavilion, Francisco worked on developing conservation projects in the mountains of Oaxaca, Mexico working with local people and raising awareness about the importance of bees and general biodiversity.