Richard Jones (Chairman) & new Trustee Dirk de Graaf

                     The Eva Crane Trust is pleased to announce that Prof. Dr Dirk de Graaf, has joined their board of Trustees. 

Since 2014 Dr. de Graaf has been Professor of insect physiology and pathology and Head of the Laboratory of Molecular Entomology and Bee Pathology at Ghent University, Belgium. He is also founder and current director of the collaboration/service platform Honeybee Valley. This is a bridge between fundamental bee research and the more applied beekeeping. As a biotechnologist he was one of the first to introduce PCR technology in honey bee disease diagnosis with a conformational test for American Foulbrood (2001). A test that soon became a standardized tool for veterinary diagnosis.

Bee pathology was, for many years, his primary focus with the development of several other tools for disease diagnosis, genotyping and the discovery of several new bee pathogens using traditional and Next Generation Sequencing approaches. Prof. de Graaf headed the Diagnostics department in the EU-funded 7^th Framework Program BEE-DOC. He was also involved in several genome sequencing consortia resulting in papers in Nature, Science, BMC Genomics and Genome Biology. Additionally, Prof. de Graaf leads the Flemish Beekeeping Program that coordinates - among other things - the regional selection programme.

Prof. de Graaf was president and organizer of the 8^th European Congress of Apidology (EurBee) successfully held in Ghent in September 2018. Today he is coordinator of the European Commission funded Research and Innovation Action called B-GOOD (Giving Beekeeping Guidance by cOmputatiOnal-assisted Decision making) devoted to honey bee health and sustainable beekeeping.

The Trust is truly delighted that Prof. de Graaf has been able to join the Board and that he shares the commitment of all of its members to continue our Founder’s aims of supporting and promoting research and the dissemination of information relevant to the development of beekeeping worldwide.

Richard Jones
Chairman, Eva Crane Trust
September 2019.