California
Buzz’s Bees – (530) 882-4302
Coma Apiaries – (530) 547-5773
C.F. Koehnen – (530) 891-5216
Tinoco Bee Service – (530) 531-5245

Georgia
Gardener’s Apiaries – (912) 367-9352
H & R Apiaries – (912) 427-7311
Hardeman Apiaries – (912) 583-2710
Wilbanks Apiaries – (912) 739-4820

Ohio
Parson’s Gold Apiaries – (419) 235-7037
Waldo Ohio Bees – (740) 524-6241

Texas
B Weaver – (866) 547-3376
R Weaver – (936) 825-2333

The conference promises to offer something for everyone, including many great opportunities for learning, networking and socializing. From the new small-scale beekeeper to the seasoned professional, conference organizers have planned a schedule to incorporate educational sessions at all levels. The tradeshow, as always, will feature the latest and greatest deals and new product ideas.

The conference will be held at the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino. The ABF has negotiated a discounted group rate for all conference attendees of $109 per night single/double occupancy plus tax. The ABF is excited to be in Las Vegas, the city that attracts more than 36 million visitors a year by offering the grandest hotels, the biggest stars in entertainment, the highest caliber of award-winning chefs, the brightest lights – and, now, the best beekeepers!

The conference will begin on Tuesday evening with a complimentary welcome reception for all registered attendees. Wednesday morning will kick-off with the Opening General Session followed by Shared Interest Group meetings, and then finish in the evening with the traditional Honey Queen Reception. The 2012 American Honey Show will also take place on Wednesday.

The tradeshow will open on Wednesday afternoon and remain open during conference hours until 1:00 p.m. on Friday. Thursday and Friday will be dedicated to general sessions, as well as the always-popular and well-attended Serious Sideliner Symposium. Interactive workshops will take place on Saturday morning. In addition, the ABF will host its annual banquet during the conference.

Registration rates, online registration and hotel reservation information is now available on the conference Web site at www.nabeekeepingconference.com. Be sure to check the Web site often as additional conference details will be posted as soon as they are made available.

The study, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is the first to show that common, naturally occurring behaviors are under the influence of discrete regulatory networks in the brain. It confirms, scientists say, what years of research into the brain and behavior seemed to indicate: There is a close relationship between changes in gene expression – which genes are actively transcribed into other molecules to perform specific tasks in the cell – and behavior.

“We found that there is a high degree of modularity in the regulation of genes and behavior, with distinct behavioral states represented by distinct gene network configurations,” said University of Illinois entomology and neuroscience professor Gene Robinson, who led the study. Robinson is the director of the Institute for Genomic Biology at Illinois.

The study made use of data from the BeeSpace Project. Curated by Illinois medical information science professor Bruce Schatz, BeeSpace is a catalog of genes that turn on or off in the bee brain in response to social cues, environmental changes or as a result of hereditary factors. By analyzing gene expression and behavioral data from dozens of studies (which were performed under the auspices of the BeeSpace Project), the researchers were able to get a broad view of the molecular changes in the bee brain that contribute to behavior.

The team focused their analysis on lists of genes implicated in at least one of three categories of behavior: foraging, such as scouting for flowers or navigating to and from the hive; maturation, the process by which an adult honey bee graduates from being a nanny to working as a forager as it grows older; and aggression, or hive defense.

The researchers then used a systems approach, led by Illinois chemical and biomolecular engineering professor Nathan Price (now at the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle), to create a computer model of a gene regulatory network that could predict the differences in gene expression seen in the experimental studies.

The model found a “mosaic” pattern of behavior-related gene expression in the brain. It also predicted that a few transcription factors – genes that regulate other genes – play a role in all three behavioral categories. Only four of these “global regulators” were identified, while sets of about 15-25 transcription factors were behavior-specific.

Researchers have long worried that the regulation of brain gene expression is too complex to fathom, because so many factors can act together to regulate behavior.
”But now we see that direct, linear relationships between transcription factors and downstream genes can predict a surprisingly large amount of gene expression,” Price said. “This gives scientists hope that it will be possible to completely understand the regulation of brain gene expression in the future.

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Funding for this study was provided by the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the National Cancer Institute, the U.S. Department of Defense, the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg and the Roy J. Carver Charitable Trust.

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