Dirk de Graaf

B-GOOD’s project coordinator Prof. dr. Dirk de Graaf of Universiteit Ghent has devoted his research to disease-causing agents of bees. In recent years Prof. de Graaf focuses his research on bridging fundamental research and beekeeping practice, focusing on bee health and selection.

His team investigates whether the health status of a bee colony depends also on genetic components. If the genetic background partly determines colony health, it becomes highly important for beekeeping management and risk assessment.

Coby van Dooremalen

Dr. Coby van Dooremalen studied animal science and ecology at Wageningen University. Coby continued building on her work on the adaptive capacity of animals to changing environments, but made the switch to honey bees & honey bee health. Her topics range from the ecology of stress & underlying mechanisms in the context of colony losses to adaptive capacities of colonies towards Varroa mites.

Within B-GOOD, Coby is leading WP1, where she coordinates the data tier 1 to 3 on data collection & data harmonisation.

David Claeys Boúúaert

David Claeys Boúúaert of University of Ghent focuses his research on the ecological & genetic background of honeybee health. Within B-GOOD he works on genotype & phenotype distribution underlying the suppressed mite reproduction & suppressed in-ovo virus infection traits.

"With a better understanding of the genetic & ecological factors underlying resistance against pathogens we can adapt our management practices in order to improve honey beehealth", David says about his work on honey bee pathogens.

José Paulo Sousa

José Paulo Sousa, PhD, of the University of Coimbra, focuses his research on land use and landscape-driven changes in soil and terrestrial invertebrates. Within B-GOOD he coordinates the creation of habitat suitability maps for bees and beekeeping in the EU.

Paulo's team develops tools to help decision makers to plan actions & policies to help landscapes become more suitable for bees & beekeeping. They create tools allowing beekeepers to better assess resources & make informed decisions where to locate apiaries.

Marten Schoonman

Within his work, Marten Schoonman of the BEEP Foundation develops innovative, open source digital tools such as apps and IoT devices. The BEEP team develops the BEEP beekeeping app & BEEP base, as well as other tech such as the B-GOOD Bee health data portal.

"Honey bee colonies are fascinating and taking good care of them is important. Research & digital tools can help monitor honeybee health. open source code and tool designs foster collaboration & enable fast development", Marten says.

Alexis Beaurepaire

Alexis Beaurepaire of the University of Bern has a PhD in Molecular Ecology. He studies host-parasite co-evolution and honeybee health. Alongside Prof. Peter Neumann, Alexis leads B-GOOD's communication and dissemination, hosts a mini-apiary & collaborates with Swiss beekeepers.

"Working on the B-GOOD project, it gave me a chance to add a different angle to envisage bee biology and bee health. This even convinced me to start hobby beekeeping, and I have become the proud owner of two colonies", says Alexis.

Martin Bencsik

Dr. Martin Bencsik of Nottingham Trent University focuses his research on vibrational messages that honeybees use to communicate. His team monitors vibrations originating from B-GOOD colonies, trying to find out whether some of the signals are related to bee health disorders.

Martin's team at B-GOOD aims to better understand the relevance of vibrations taking place in the colony. The main idea is it could help the beekeeper find out more about their colonies without even having to open the hive.

Cédric Alaux

INRAE focuses its research on understanding how bees respond to changing environments & develops Honeybee monitoring tools. Within B-GOOD Cédric's team develops a bee counter providing real-time recording of bee activity at the hive entrance. B-GOOD helps understand the effects of different factors on bees.

"Honeybees are currently under the threat of growing anthropogenic pressures & thus the monitoring of their population is crucial for developing protective policies", Cédric says. 

Dana Freshley

Dana Freshley of Ghent University focuses her research on innovation & technology adoption in agriculture! Within B-GOOD Dana investigates the social side of beekeeping, analysing the beekeepers' attitudes towards sustainable beekeeping & hive monitoring technology.  

"Gathering beekeepers' & stakeholders' views on hive monitoring technology is very important to understand the potential that such innovations have for improving beekeeping practices & sustability of beekeeping", Dana says.

Mang Xu

Mang Xu of Wageningen Food Safety Research focuses her research on the development of multiplex detection assays for environmental contaminants, especially neonicotinoid insecticides.

The LFD technology that Mang develops within B-GOOD, is comparable to a pregnancy test and aims to provide a rapid tool for the detection of bee-harming pesticides including neonicotinoids, avermectins, fipronil and pyrethroids.

Raffaele Dall'Olio

Raffaele Dall'Olio of BeeSource focuses his work on conservation, sustainable bee breeding, and improving honeybee management through applied research. Within B-GOOD, he focuses on field protocols, coordination of Tier2 beekerers in Italy, and the BEEP app.

"Technology transfer from research to beekeepers is pivotal to secure that the new generation of beekeepers can achieve economic satisfaction while being prepared to face the challenges in our environment", Raffaele says.

Jeroen Peters

Jeroen Peters is a researcher in the Biosensors department of Wageningen Food Safety Research (WFSR) and focusses on the development of (multiplex) detection assays for food and environmental contaminants. Within his projects, rapid on-site assays are developed for the detection of e.g. bee-harming pesticides, antibiotics, mycotoxins and tranquilizers. The WFSR team within B-GOOD focuses on the development and application of the lateral-flow devices (LFDs) for bee-harming pesticides.

Adam McVeigh

Adam McVeigh is a research assistant at Nottingham Trent University and an experienced entomologist. He has put a lot of his time into researching butterflies, insects and all sorts of other pollinators.

Within B-GOOD, Adam creates temperature frames that measure the bees inside the hive. This important work helps BEEP foundation with the vibration analysis.

Alex Giurgiu

Alex Giurgiu has studied the potential of genetic resistance to Varroa Destructor for lock out bee populations. For his analysis, he uses bees, selected based on the Darwinian principle.

He and his team at the University of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine of Cluj-Napoca, led by Prof. Daniel Dezmirean conduct analyses based on transcriptomic data between the interaction of the host and parasite and between different stages of the brood of Varroa Destructors.

Arrigo Moro

Arrigo Moro’s research background focuses on host parasite coevolution between Apis Mellifera and Varroa Destructor. He is applying evolutionary point of view to solve the global problem of the Varroa destructor parasite.

Within B-GOOD, Arrigo is leading the communication work package and acts as the local coordinator for Bern, Switzerland. Because of his scientific background, Arrigo is also helping beekeepers with their research.

Kirsten Leufgen

Kirsten Leufgen is a chemist by training. She is a senior scientist in biophysical chemistry and has extensive knowledge of research policies and administration. From there, her focus shifted to Research Management and Communication.

Kirsten co-founded the company SCIPROM which supports researchers in collaborative projects. Within B-GOOD, she and her enterprise are supporting the project management.

Lina De Smet

Lina De Smet is a postdoc researcher in effective biochemistry. She specialised in electral transport of proteins. Her disciplines include:Transcription and translation, Molecular and cell biology not elsewhere classified, Biomedical modelling, DNA analysis technology, Epigenetics, Physiology.

Within B-GOOD, Lina acts as the project manager and coordinates most of the work in B-GOOD.

Pim van Gennip

Pim van Gennip is creating a variety of technical devices that measure phenomenons in nature and visualise them in an easy way to interpret and to draw conclusions from any things that you see in sensor data, manual inspection data and combine them into information to conclude irregularities or problems.

Within B-GOOD, Pim creates all kinds of insect monitoring devices & stable farm monitors to see animals and observe their behaviour. 

Zeynep Ulgezen

Zeynep Ulgezen is an ecologist, with a focus on animal behaviour. Before working with bees, she focused on projects related to deer & birds, conducting a variety of research on different species. 

Zeynep is a postdoc and within B-GOOD, she is devoted to data collection & standardisation. Her team is collecting data from colonies on parameters that are related to bee health & sensor measurements with BEEP.

Teodor Metodiev

Teodor Metodiev, a senior science communication expert at Pensoft, holds a degree in media and communication science from the University of Mannheim, Germany, specialising in global and science communication.

Teodor is involved in the communication and dissemination of several other H2020 projects focusing on topics such as wild pollinator health, farmland birds conservation, natural use of microbiomes, long term ecosystem research and research integrity.