Success! You’re officially part of the Optera Hive.
We’ll be in contact through our monthly newsletter – with new scientific findings, UBeeO updates and other bee fun.
In the meantime, want do know more about why we do what we do?
Check out this short video about Optera’s mission!
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. 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.
Ryan Finch comes to Optera with soil under her nails, a passport in her pocket, and bees on her mind. A builder at heart, she has helped launch and grow ventures ranging from an urban farm to a software sales company to an educational leadership community for international university students.
Today, she serves as the Fractional COO at Optera —and she’s excited to bee here.
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, 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 local hygienic queens each year. His line originated from Dan and Judy Harvey at Olympic Wilderness Apiary, who bait trapped feral swarms back in the 1990s in the Rain Forest region of coastal Washington State and then hybridized 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.
