It’s been rumored that most good ideas are shared over tacos. While there may not be a way to prove this scientifically, we believe it to be true for us – that’s how the concept of Optera was born.
In March 2020, Kaira was at lunch with her colleagues in the UNC Greensboro honey bee lab discussing career goals. Kaira had been developing UBeeO™ for nearly a decade through her PhD and post-doctoral work and was ready to move it to the market for beekeepers. Over lunch, Kaira’s advisor told her about a federal grant that helps move innovation from the laboratory to the market. With support from one of her lab mates, Kaira co-founded Optera a few months later. After a successful grant application and two years of research and development, UBeeO was officially launched in January, 2024.
Today, Kaira manages 100 research hives in Greensboro, NC and researches several topics related to honey bee health.
Kaira Wagoner, PhD, is the co-inventor of the UBeeOTM Assay. Dr. Wagoner currently serves as CEO of Optera, a honey bee health company based in Greensboro, North Carolina, which manufactures UBeeOTM. She also works with pollinators in her role as a Research Scientist at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG). Dr. Wagoner’s doctoral research at UNCG focused on honey bee chemical communication and hygienic behavior, which led to the development of UBeeOTM. In 2023, Dr. Wagoner was recognized in Copenhagen, Denmark as a finalist for the BII & AAAS Science Prize for Innovation for her work with UBeeOTM. When not in the lab or apiary, Dr. Wagoner enjoys traveling, playing games, and spending time in the great outdoors with her husband and three nature-loving boys.
Rex Roberton is the brains behind Optera’s new UBeeO Precision Guide and the UBeeO Test Ring 2.0. Rex is Former president of the North Olympic Peninsula Beekeepers Association in Washington State, where he currently serves as an instructor and Education Trustee. With a commitment to sustainable practices he maintains his colonies using biotechnical methods to control Varroa mites and diseases. Rex’s beekeeping journey began in 1973 when he was farming and ranching with his father in Northeastern Montana. A neighbor helped him start with his first colony. Skip a few years… In 2020, he obtain an experimental use permit from the Washington State Department of Agriculture and did several experiments with extended-release oxalic acid (OAE) based on Randy Oliver’s work. He then introduced OAE to club members so they could have an organic alternative for mite control. Rex has never used synthetic miticides in his colonies – instead he relies on hygienic bees and a summer brood interruption, with limited use of oxalic acid. Rex raises his own queens each year but occasionally brings in some outside genetics to compliment his stock, which he originally obtained locally from Dan and Judy Harvey at Olympic Wilderness Apiary. Rex says his early success with bees has to be attributed to this local hygienic line from Dan and Judy that started with bait trapping feral swarms back in the 1990s in the Rain Forest region of coastal Washington State and then hybridizing them with USDA Primorsky Russians, WSU Caucasian lines, and several proven sources of SMR/VSH stock. Rex currently lives on a one acre homestead in the foothills of the Olympic Mountains where he grows vegetables, apples, and berries. He has a small blueberry orchard of 70 mature bushes with about 25 distinct cultivars.
