Highlights from the 2026 International Pollinator Conference

The PSU Center for Pollinator Research members, together with the Pollinator Health Center at Montana State University, hosted the 2026 International Conference on Pollinator Biology, Health and Policy, held from June 25 - 27 at Montana State (Bozeman, MT). The ~130 participants at the meeting, including 16 members of the PSU Center for Pollinator Research, gathered together to present and learn about the latest research results and issues in pollinator research. It was a successful meeting with excellent opportunities for networking and a blend of participants from academia, industry, and pollinator conservation agencies.

This year’s meeting revealed how the landscape of pollinator research is changing, including:

*Many talks featured the use of automated technology to collect large-scale datasets to understand conservation and biodiversity of pollinators, and how that technology can be put to use in applications for the public. For example, remote sensing and drone technology is being used to monitor landscape quality, data from land use datasets are being integrated into applications for public assessment of the quality of backyards and broader landscape for bees, and automatic identification technologies allow us to better monitor how insects are impacted by their environment.

*The use of large scale data collection as well as community engagement, such as through Bee Atlas projects and iNaturalist, is enabling the improved understanding of the more rare taxa. The meeting featured talks on data gathering on natural history of ground nesting bees, Asian honey bee biology, and plant-carrion-pollinator networks of stingless bees that forage on less savory sources (carrion and dung!). It also featured expanding floral-pollinator interaction datasets that are enabling custom plant mixes for pollinators.

*There was rising awareness of the impacts of pesticides on pollinators, including in the soil in which they are nesting, and the need for effective policy to improve outcomes for pollinators and humans alike. The meeting revealed how stressors can vary substantially by bee and region, thus the need for local monitoring efforts, and featured the interactive role of multiple stressors on bees.

To cap off the meeting, while the weather was cold and wet, many participants enjoyed some site-seeing in Yellowstone.

We look forward to planning the 2029 International Pollinator Conference, to be held at Penn State!