News

 ****      New Trust Chair    ****

Professor Juliet Osborne is to become the new Chair of the CB Dennis British Beekeeper’s Research  Trust from October.  She is taking over from Simon Baker, who has led the Trust for the past 7 years.  Juliet is an Honorary Professor affiliated with the University of Exeter and an internationally recognised expert in insect and pollination ecology; particularly in relation to factors affecting honeybee and bumblebee populations. 

Two Trust funded PhD studentships completed

Congratulations to Oliver Visick on successfully completing his doctoral thesis at the University of Sussex, looking at 'Occurrence, density and survival of honey bee, Apis mellifera, colonies in the wild: potential limiting factors in southeast England and elsewhere in Europe'. This studentship was wholly funded by the Trust and has been an exceptionally productive PhD as noted by his supervisor, Professor Francis Ratnieks:

'Overall, the PhD has been a great success and created important new research on wild living honey bee colonies, developed new methods, and has generated results that may surprise people. For example, that wild-living honey bee colonies are more numerous worldwide than managed hives, that in SE England wild colonies have high survival rates and are not just swarms from managed hives that will soon die out, and a novel method of determining, in a non-destructive and practical way, the volume of tree cavities in order to determine how many are suitable for honey bees. Ollie has also used the decoding of waggle dances in a novel way, to determine the availability of natural nest sites for honey bee swarms.'

The first 4 peer reviewed papers arising from his work are available from our Publications and Reports page.

Congratulations to Monika Yordanova who has successfully completed her PhD studentship under the supervision of Dr Peter Graystock at Imperial College London.  This rewarding studentship was jointly funded by the Trust and Bee Diseases Insurance Ltd. Monica was studying M. plutonius, the bacterial pathogen that causes European Foul Brood in honey bee larvae.  She was looking at the prevalence of the pathogen on flowers, and how the the virulence of the pathogen is effected by associated microbes and pesticides.  Much of Monica's work is yet to be published but when it is we will make it available on our Publications and Reports page.  Monica has now moved on to a postdoctoral position at the University of Oxford.

We wish Oliver and Monika  every success in their future careers, and if you would like to join us in the vital task of supporting research and the researchers of tomorrow please consider donating via our Support Us page.  Thank you.

Projects approved for funding at the Trust Board Meeting in April 2025

Two research projects were approved for funding:

• Current UK control methods for the yellow-legged Asian hornet involve the detection and destruction of their nests.  Detecting the nests is difficult and expensive and the project, led by Professor Paul White of the University of Southampton, will analyse and develop acoustic tools to help speed up the detection of the nests.

• Fiona Tainsh at the University of Warwick, will undertake a project investigating the genetic separation between Red Mason Bee Osmia bicornis populations across the UK using microsatellite markers. 

  Call for Research or Travel applications.      The Trustees meet twice a year and the next meeting  at which new applications will be considered is in the spring 2026.  If you have a research or travel proposal you wish to be considered for funding, please complete an application and email it to the Trust Secretary by 1st March 2026.  Application forms and details of the application process can be found under: How to apply for funding .