Rae Olsson, Ph.D., is a postdoctoral research associate at Washington State University, studying how a suite of environmental and management factors influence bee health and colony mortality. “My research is unique in that the dataset we are working with will be really large in comparison to most honey bee research, around 10,000 hives,” Olsson says. “And we are using spatial analysis, historical and real time environmental data, and a suite of statistical analyses to build a full picture of the issues being faced by honey bees and beekeepers.”