The Board of the Eva Crane Trust is delighted to welcome a new member from the beginning of 2023.

Dr Sjef van der Steen, from the Netherlands, has worked with, and researched honey bees and bumble bees for over forty years. He obtained his PhD with work studying the honey bee colony as a biomonitoring tool in the environment. This is a topic which continues to be of interest and is perhaps even more important today in a world where so much in nature is under stress or endangered. He continues to investigate the interaction between the environment and the honey bee colony and is particularly interested in bumblebee ecotoxicology, bumblebee rearing, and bumblebee pathology.

On retirement from Wageningen University, Netherlands, he started AlveusAB Consultancy and is very active amongst bee research scientists being a member of the COLOSS executive and active in several EU- and EFSA studies. Since 2018, he coordinates the INSIGNIA study. INSIGNIA developed a practical scientifically substantiated protocol/handbook for Citizen Scientist beekeepers to use honey bee colonies as biomonitoring tools for pollen diversity, pesticides, and other contaminants. You can learn more about Dr van der Steen’s involvement with these projects at the INSIGNIA website: https://www.insignia-bee.eu/

We look forward to working with Sjef and appreciate his commitment to and enthusiasm for the Eva Crane Trust.  

Richard Jones
Chairman, Eva Crane Trust
January 2023.