Dr Nadine Chapman
Honey bees are responsible for 1/3 of the food that we eat. There is a need to breed honey bee populations that are efficient pollinators and are robust to stressors such as pests and diseases.
With collaborators I will establish an economically sustainable national genetic improvement program using innovative breeding technologies to transform the performance of honey bees in Australia.
It will focus simultaneously on traits of importance to beekeepers, and to the horticultural and broadacre industries that are dependent on honey bee pollination.
The strength of this project lies in its ability to leverage benefits across multiple industries by creating a more profitable and sustainable beekeeping industry, improving crop pollination efficiencies and enabling industry expansion through enhanced pollination security.
Research Interests
As part of my PhD undertaken at the University of Sydney, I discovered that queenless colonies attract workers from other, mostly queenless, colonies and that these interlopers produce more offspring than the workers that belong to the colony.
Following my PhD studies under Dr Ben Oldroyd, I made a brief foray into stalk-eyed flies at University College London. Since returning to the University of Sydney, I have largely worked on industry driven projects such as creating a genetic test to detect Africanized bees in quarantine and determining if queens produced early or late in the season have enough mates.
These days I enjoy the satisfaction of working on projects of intrinsic value to society; we need our bees to secure our food. I enjoy working with different stakeholders and trying to understand their needs and finding ways to meet them. I'm passionate about scientific communication, and volunteer for the eXtensionAUS Professional Beekeepers Community of Practice.