Net Meredith joins the Bee Informed Partnership after serving many years in the non-profit and public sectors working in sustainability and ecology. As Executive Director she works with BIP staff, the Board of Directors, beekeepers and other external stakeholders to support BIP’s vital work in honey bee health. Net was first introduced to the exciting world of bees in graduate school. Years ago, fieldwork with the Colorado Natural Heritage Program and The Nature Conservancy’s Carpenter Ranch led her to doctoral research working with farmers to promote pollinators on working agricultural lands in the Mid-Atlantic. She holds a Ph.D. in Environmental Science and a M.S. in…
Archives: Teams
Bee Informed Team
Eric Malcolm
Eric was born and raised in Silver Spring, MD. After a short period studying Adventure Sports with a focus on white water kayaking, he turned to a life of sales and marketing in the fitness industry and began fitness coaching. He later moved into wine sales for a local winery. After some time, he decided to leave the work-force to stay at home with his newborn daughter and shortly after he finally evolved into a beekeeper. His passion for honey bees and edible landscaping got him headed down the road to starting his own small apiary management business, and that's when his friend Dan introduced…
Rachel Kuipers
Rachel first started working with honey bees in 2016 as a student in the University of Maryland Bee Lab. After graduating from UMD with a degree in journalism in 2018, she continued working with the UMD Bee Lab and joined BIP in 2018. As Communications Coordinator, Rachel helps with coordinating the blog and social media accounts, keeping the website updated, and planning/coordinating BIP-hosted events such as webinars and panel discussions. As Sentinel Program Coordinator, she helps coordinate the Sentinel Program from initiation to closing (and everything in between!).
Mikayla E. Wilson
Mikayla designs and maintains the database applications for the Bee Informed Partnership since 2011. Mikayla has a Master’s degree in Entomology from the University of Tennessee and has worked in University database computing roles since 1994. She has been a beekeeper since the late 1990s as well, with a keen interest in applying information technology to agricultural sciences and education. She has worked on numerous USDA projects since 2008 in response to the decline in bee health, first at Tennessee then joining the University of Maryland bee lab from 2021 to 2023.
Dan Wyns
Dan was introduced to honey bees in 2005 while in New Zealand on a working holiday, and he has been consumed with caring for and learning about them ever since. Prior to joining BIP, Dan was a commercial beekeeper in New Zealand and western Canada where he was fortunate to gain a diversity of beekeeping experience across a variety of climates and agricultural landscapes. He joined BIP in 2014 as a Field Specialist in the Pacific Northwest and spent 3 years working with beekeepers across Oregon, Washington, and Idaho. The BIP Tech Transfer Team expansion to the Great Lakes region began in 2017 to provide…
Robert Snyder
Rob currently works out of UC-Davis and previously worked out of the Butte County Cooperative Extension in Oroville, CA as a Crop Protection Agent. He received his B.S. in biology from Delaware Valley College, PA. There he attained a majority of his entomological knowledge from Dr. Chris Tipping and Dr. Robert Berthold. After graduation, Rob was an apiary inspector for 2 years at the Department of Agriculture in Pennsylvania. In his third year there, he still inspected some colonies but mainly focused on The Pennsylvania Native Bee Survey (PANBS) where he pinned, labeled, entered data and identified native bees to genus and species. Leo Donavall…
Ben Sallmann
As the Honey Bee Health Field Specialist for the Pacific Northwest, Ben works with migratory beekeepers from around the region and helps monitor diseases, pest loads, and colony health. Most of his experience with commercial beekeeping comes from his time working with BIP in Northern California (2013-2017), where he helped queen breeders select stock and test for hygienic behavior. It has been fascinating to observe and compare the different management strategies used by commercial beekeepers in the western US, and he has learned there are many different ways to run a successful commercial operation. Ben is especially interested in Varroa control, and brood disease identification…
Matt Hoepfinger
After receiving a Master’s degree in computer science from Michigan State, Matt moved to Golden, Colorado where he worked in the telecom industry as a software engineer for 25 years. He started keeping bees at the hobby level in 2011, which quickly became his passion (some have called it his obsession). He serves as director of Mountain High Beekeepers Cooperative and after playing an essential role in founding the Colorado Professional Beekeepers Association, he continues to provide support for the group. Matt joined the Tech Transfer Team in California in 2019 where he works closely with commercial beekeepers in the region to assist with colony…
Anne Marie Fauvel
Anne Marie is fascinated by honey bees and the people who care for them. Even though she taught Biology, Environmental and Food Systems Studies for years, she focused her research interests on honey bees and more specifically on developing better tools to study them. Anne Marie worked on a few projects in collaboration with BIP and enjoyed it so much that she jumped at the opportunity to join the team full time. She now thoroughly enjoys living, what she likes to call a full BIP life, facilitating collaboration between commercial beekeepers, BIP’s highly specialized Tech Team Experts in the field, the various research institutions, and…
Nathalie Steinhauer
As the Bee Informed Partnership's Science and Research Officer, Nathalie is based out of Maryland. She completed her PhD working under Dennis vanEngelsdorp in 2017 in the University of Maryland’s Entomology Department. She previously obtained a Master's in Biology from Universite Libre de Bruxelles (Belgium) and a Master Research in Ecology, Evolution and Conservation from Imperial College London (UK). Skilled in experimental design, data analysis, and modeling, her research interests range from fundamental population dynamics and animal behavior to applied work in epidemiology. Self-described R-enthusiast, and beekeeper since 2009.