Dr Fani Hatjina (Chair of Council)
Hellenic Agriculture Org. “DEMETER”, Greece
The four years in Cardiff University for her PhD studies (1991-1994) brought Fani close to IBRA and its staff. IBRA’s headquarters became her second home in Cardiff, given that she was spending much of her studying time there. That is how she came to know and follow IBRA’s activities as an international library, publishing house, conference organising organisation and promoter of apiculture knowledge and practice also in developing countries. The best experience though, was meeting Dr Eva Crane and a visit to her house some years later. The strong personality, the demanding conversations and her curiosity as well as her knowledge on the historical findings from Ancient Greece, are unforgettable. It was the same period, that Fani also had the opportunity to visit Buckfast Abbey and Brother Adam as part of an educational trip organised during the Diploma Course at Cardiff University.
As an Associate Editor of the Journal of Apicultural Research since 2006, and a close collaborator of IBRA, Fani is trying to give a helping hand with its activities, and especially to increase scientists’ awareness for IBRA’s work, to take JAR and Bee World one step ahead, and to improve the dissemination of knowledge between scientists and beekeepers.
Hellenic Institute of Apiculture website
Short Academic Biography for Dr Antonios Tsagkarakis
Antonios Tsagkarakis is Assistant Professor of Entomology in the Department of Crop Science at the Agricultural University of Athens (AUA), Greece, since 2021. He has BSc, MSc and PhD in Entomology from the AUA. He had also been assigned as a Post-Doctoral Research Associate in the Department of Entomology and Nematology of the University of Florida, USA, for 3 years.
At the AUA, Antonios is teaching Apiculture and Sericulture, Pathology of Productive insects, General Entomology and Agricultural Entomology. Furthermore, he supervises PhD, MSc and BSc students and his team runs more than 10 research projects in the fields of classical and precision Apiculture, Sericulture, Agricultural and Productive Entomology.
Antonios is also good in statistics, and he is interested to serve in IBRA as Council member and help with promotion and dissemination, though the journals as well as other publications.
Hans Kjaersgaard was IBRA Chairman between 2010 and 2014. He became Company Secretary in 2016.
Hans was born and grew up in Denmark. He moved to England in the mid 1970s and started a career in international business. Part of his responsibilities in one of his first jobs was to represent Eastern European state exporters, and one of these sold Acacia and other honey. As he knew little about honey, he looked for an organisation that had knowledge and came across IBRA. On his first visit to IBRA at Hill House he met Dr Eva Crane who was very helpful and enthusiastic. Armed with books from the IBRA library, he set about trying to equip himself with sufficient knowledge. When Eva retired, her successor, Margaret Adey suggested that Hans should join IBRA council as someone with a business background. In the following years Hans was one of only a handful of people who traded honey internationally, which took him to beekeepers and cooperatives in many countries. Whilst he was also trading other food commodities (e.g. tomato paste, fruit juices, tea etc.), honey remained his favourite and during this time he became familiar with all the major honey-producing countries in the world and also some smaller countries with highly specialised honey. During that time Hans was regularly in contact with Eva Crane and involved whenever there were commercial aspects of honey on her horizon. Before retiring, Hans was International Sales Manager at a subsidiary of McCormick (the world’s largest spice company) and then moved to The Netherlands to work for International Flavours and Fragrances which is one of the largest companies in its field. At IFF he was responsible for flavour sales in the Middle East and later managed project teams and agents/distributors in Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Throughout his working life Hans has enjoyed meeting people from all over the world. Whenever he has had a chance he has sampled the local honey and this resulted in some very interesting experiences in exotic places like Yemen, Guatemala and Sri Lanka. Now back in England and retired, Hans does a little consultancy, spends time with his family, does some voluntary work, and living in Windsor can easily pursue his interest in history.
Jacqueline Hart
Worcestershire, UK
Jacqueline joined IBRA Council in 2021. She is the Treasurer.
She was born in Blantyre, Malawi. Her father was Canadian and her mother was German. Jacquie started her career in equine studies but later moved into business administration. Having lived quite a nomadic life, Jacquie has had the pleasure of living and working in Canada, Scotland and several different parts of England in a variety of industries including electrical wholesale, hospitality, food and finally settling in Worcester and the further education sector 18 years ago.
Jacquie has an MA in Educational Leadership & Management through the University of Wolverhampton and currently holds the post of Executive Director at a medium-sized further education college in the West Midlands. This makes her responsible for five main curriculum areas across three campuses as well as leading on creating a cross-college leadership and management development programme for academic and corporate services staff.
Jacquie started keeping bees in 2012 but has always had a real interest and passion for nature and wildlife in general. She is an avid DIYer, gardener, reader, dog owner and generally just enjoys learning about anything.
Prof. Jamie Ellis
University of Florida, USA
Jamie Ellis co-edited the Special Issue of the Journal of Apicultural Research on the small hive beetle in 2008, and is one of the editors of the COLOSS BEEBOOK.
Jamie is the Gahan Endowed Associate Professor of Entomology in the Department of Entomology and Nematology at the University of Florida. He has a BS degree in Biology from the University of Georgia (Georgia, USA) and a PhD in Entomology from Rhodes University in South Africa. At the University of Florida, Jamie has responsibilities in extension, instruction and research. Regarding his extension work, Jamie created the AFBEE program (African Bee Extension and Education Program), the UF, South Florida, and Caribbean Bee Colleges, and the UF Master Beekeeper Program. As an instructor, Jamie supervises PhD and masters students in addition to offering an online beekeeping course. Currently, Jamie and his team have over 30 active research projects in the fields of honey bee husbandry, conservation and ecology, and integrated crop pollination. Jamie is a member of the COLOSS Executive Committee.
Dr Martin Kunz
London, UK
Martin joined the IBRA Council in 2016. He has been working in numerous Fair Trade positions for more than 45 years, including being the executive secretary of TransFair International (TFI, the global Fair Trade labelling association at the time) when criteria for Fairly Traded labelled honey were introduced in 1994. Apart from keeping a few colonies in London (UK) he has a company called Diversity Honeys, which imports honeys from honey bees other than Apis mellifera. The purpose of this effort is twofold: to highlight the need for native pollinators that are adapted to their respective regions, and to show that the EU honey directive is unscientific and politically wrong honey (it permits the import (and sale) of honey ONLY if it is from A. mellifera – making trade in honey from A. dorsata, A. cerana, and A. florea difficult/illegal). He has also developed ventilated bee suits made from certified organic cotton (instead of fossil-based plastics).
Within IBRA he is the contact with Taylor & Francis and looks after Twitter. He is a fellow of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) as well as the Linnean Society.
Paolo Fontana
Paolo Fontana is a naturalist, entomologist, apidologist, beekeeper, writer and popularizer. Since 2009 he has been a researcher at the Edmund Mach Foundation of San Michele all’Adige (Italy, Trento).
He is president of the World Biodiversity Association, member of scientific societies and academies (Accademia Roveretana degli Agiati and Accademia Olimpica of Vicenza) and also of some technical bodies.
He has described 101 new species and genera of arthropods (mainly insects) and has published several hundred scientific, technical and informative articles and several monographs, including The Joy of Bees (2019).
Paolo Fontana is among the drafters of the San Michele all’Adige Declaration (12 June 2018) for the genetic protection of Apis mellifera and of the Declaration of Pantelleria (20 May 2022) for the protection of wild colonies of Western Honey Bee.
He is a beekeeper for over 35 years and partner of a professional beekeeping company. He is a supporter and popularizer of beekeeping, whether for income or family, based on the biological characteristics of the honey bee and on the respect and valorization of its ecological role and its products on a territorial basis.
He has participated in national and local television and radio programs for many years and carries out a very intense activity as a lecturer.
Paolo Fontana tries to combine, with irony and liveliness, scientific research and activism, with a view to protecting biodiversity and sustainability.
Dr Patricia Vit
Patricia Vit is a Biologist, MSc Food Science, Universidad Simón Bolívar, Caracas, Venezuela; PhD, Cardiff University, UK.
Professor, Food Science Department, Faculty of Pharmacy and Bioanalysis at Universidad de Los Andes, Mérida, Venezuela (1985-2013), Chair of Food Technology; author of Methodology of Research, Food Science, and Food Technology set texts.
Coordinator of a National Museum of Apiculture (1988 -2000).
Teaching award Mariano Picón Salas, 2020.
Honorary Associate Medical School, University of Sydney, Australia (2011-2019).
Prometeo-Senescyt Universidad Tecnica de Machala, Ecuador (2014-2015).
Springer books by Vit, Pedro & Roubik, eds.: Pot-honey. A legacy of stingless bees (2013), and Pot-pollen in stingless bee melittology (2018), and preparing Pot-propolis in stingless bee ecology by Vit, Bankova, Popova & Roubik, eds.
New interest in bibliometrics. Scopus h-index 19, Google Scholar 31.
Three new species were named after her, the stingless bee Partamona vitae Pedro & Camargo, 2003; the bee-floral yeast Starmerella vitae Santos, Lachance & Rosa, 2018; and with her family, the Ecuadorian stingless bee Scaptotrigona vitorum Engel, 2022.
She adored scuba diving and writing as Alfa Bet.
Prof. Robert Paxton
University of Halle, Germany
After graduating from Sussex University, with a BSc in Biological Sciences and a PhD in the evolutionary ecology of wasps, Robert moved to Cardiff University in 1985 to work on bee biology and to teach on the newly founded Diploma in Apiculture. Under the tutelage of Professors Robert Pickard and John Free, he could not have had a better introduction to the honey bee, its biology and management. Robert was simultaneously introduced to IBRA, which had just moved headquarters to Cardiff. Of course he immediately joined. IBRA’s ever-welcoming staff and excellent library were to become indispensable for his research and for that of the Diploma in Apiculture students. In 1990, when IBRA was under the direction of Andrew Matheson, he even had the honour to be invited onto Council of IBRA, a role he readily accepted. In 1993 Robert transferred to Uppsala University (Sweden) as a visiting postdoctoral researcher (as an EU Madame Curie Fellow) to develop his interests in population genetics with Professor Pekka Pamilo. Then in 1996 he moved to the University of Tübingen (Germany) to focus on social evolution in sweat bees. In 2003 he returned to the UK to take up a lectureship at Queen’s University Belfast, where he and his group worked on social evolution, insect conservation, pollination and bee diseases. After a year (2009-10) at Cornell University, USA in the lab of Prof. Bryan Danforth, renowned for his work on sweat bee phylogenies, in August 2010 Robert moved back to Germany to the Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg to take up the Chair in General Zoology in the Institute for Biology, where he collaborates closely with the neighbouring group of honey bee population geneticist Prof. Robin Moritz. His group at Halle continues with its four research themes of social evolution, insect conservation, pollination and honey bee diseases. Robert also holds an honorary position at Queen’s University Belfast, from where he coordinated one of the BBSRC’s (UK government’s) Insect Pollinators Initiative projects on ‘Emergent Diseases’ of bees, a project run in collaboration with Dr Juliet Osborne (University of Exeter) and Prof. Mark Brown (Royal Holloway University of London).
Throughout these peregrinations Robert has remained on IBRA Council, now though as an overseas member and therefore with less day-to-day contact. IBRA nevertheless maintains an important and cherished place in his research outlook, both as a source of knowledge and as a voice to the rest of the scientific community and the general public on all matters bee.
Stuart Roberts
Staffordshire, UK
Stuart joined IBRA Council in 2021. He is responsible for IBRA book publications.
He is a BBKA Master Beekeeper having kept bees for many years. In his spare time, he enjoys learning new things and passed his Advanced Husbandry Certificate in 2018, which gave him Master Beekeeper status. He was elected to the BBKA Education Committee in 2019 working mainly on the Honey Judge Certificate syllabus and portfolio. He is passionate about passing on his knowledge and wants to be involved in beekeeper training and beekeeper training strategy at a national level. He also gets invited to speak at other associations and has written several published articles in the BBKA news, BBKA special editions and the Beekeeper’s Quarterly.
In his professional career he works for Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) in Research and is a chartered engineer affiliated to the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET).
Victoria Soroker is a Senior Scientist at the Agricultural Research Organization (ARO), The Volcani Center in Israel.
I am a senior researcher specializing in chemical ecologist, physiology and integrated pest management and a Coloss member since 2008; https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Victoria-Soroker.
My focus is on evaluation of levels and causes of honeybee losses and involves both basic and applied aspects. Moreover, my research aims at developing an integrated approach to Varroa management including methods directed at reduction of Varroa fitness as well as at promoting honeybee individual and social resistance via breeding.
Much of my research is done in collaboration with COLOSS members, as I am an active participant in the Monitoring Core project and in Varroa and RNSBB Task forces. Since 2019 I act as one of the Varroa TF leaders.
Within these groups I am participating in common experiments, writing common articles and book chapters. In particular, I co-authored three chapters in the Beebook, a chapter in a book about Asian beekeeping in 21st century as well as in a number of manuscripts.
In 2019 I organized and hosted two Coloss workshops at my institute ARO, Israel: Varroa control and RNSBB.