I am a PhD student in the Department of Life Sciences at Imperial College London and funded by the Bee Disease Insurance Limited and the CB Dennis Trust.  I am supervised by Dr Peter Graystock and Dr Richard Gill from Imperial and Dr Sophie Evison from Nottingham University.

I study the factors that influence honey bee vulnerability to European Foul Brood (EFB) so that we may develop and promote evidence-based disease management strategies. EFB is a globally distributed disease that kills developing brood and incurs energetic costs to surviving adults, which significantly impairs hive fitness. It is one of the only two microbial bee diseases, the other being American Foulbrood, where positive detection in the UK warrants immediate notification of the authorities.

In my PhD, l investigate how the bacteria responsible for causing EFB, Melissococcus plutonius, is transmitted. Additionally, I explore some of the factors that may change the bacteria's virulence, which may allow me to identify some management practices that reduce the severity of the disease in beekeepers’ hives.  

​