Native Bees and Native Plants: Partners in Pollination, A Zoom Presentation with Barb Abraham
Date/Time
Thursday, July 23, 2026
7:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Categories
Zoom link will be posted here.
About the Presentation
Dr. Barb Abraham will be covering the following points:
- Is it a bee, a wasp, or a fly?
- Native bee families & examples in Virginia
- Native bee life cycles & nesting habits
- Bee pollinator syndrome & bee feeding habits
- Threats to native bees
- Principles for bee gardens
About the Presenter
Dr. Barbara J Abraham earned her BS in Zoology with minors in Botany and Genetics at Iowa State University and her MS in Animal
Behavior, also from Iowa State. She earned a PhD in Ecology at Utah State University.
Barb retired from full-time teaching after 31 years at Hampton University in 2016 and began teaching as an adjunct at Christopher Newport University. She said she “couldn’t go cold turkey” on teaching. Her courses at CNU have included Toxic and Venomous Animals, Evolution, Introductory Biology for non-majors, Junior Seminar for Majors (a writing-intensive course) and Ecosystem Services of Insects. She began teaching for CNU’s Lifelong Learning Institute several years ago, and has taught Toxic & Venomous Animals, What’s in Your Backyard (courses in Vertebrates and Invertebrates), Good Garden Bugs, and currently, The Plight of the Bumblebee/ Save the Pollinators! This summer she will teach a course on Spiders.
Barb studied spiders while at Utah State University and continued while at HU, conducting research at the Iowa Lakeside Lab and later in Virginia. After over 30 years of studying spiders, she turned to native bees and conducted research at Mtn. Lake Biological Station.
She was the driving force behind Hampton becoming a Bee City USA affiliate in 2019.