Profile

Dr. Yves Le Conte, PhD, HDR

Research Director at the I.N.R.A.E (Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique et de l’Environnement, in Avignon, France) in charge of programs dealing with behavioral, physiological, aspects of the honey bee biology, genetics and pathology.

Since 1983, my research focuses on the biology and chemical ecology of honey bee colonies. With my team and collaborators, we have discovered pheromones from the brood and the adult bees, which are at the center of social regulations in the honey bee colony. Those are primer and releaser pheromones. The primer effect had been studied at the molecular and physiological level.

Varroa destructor is a serious threat of the honey bee in Europe and he is also very much involved in my research dealing with host parasite relationships and also applied research to control the mite.

Since the recent honey bee losses in Europe, my team and I study the effects of different pathogens and parasites on bee health and focus on the interactions with pesticides to understand honey bee decline from the molecular and socio-genomic level to colony and landscape level.

Beekeeper since 12 years old.

Editor of le Journal Apidologie