Profile

Damien is a passionate French beekeeper who has several strings to his bow. Not only has he travelled around the world for his beekeeping training (some of which was done in NZ in 2005) but he also studied at Sorbonne Université (UPMC) in Paris where he obtained an MA in biochemistry and genetics.
Thanks to this training, he now possesses both theoretical and practical skills to help the research in bees. Having worked as a queen breeder for many years, he is well aware of not only the honeybees’ major role in agriculture but also the challenges these pollinators are facing nowadays. He aspires to find ways to protect and make them more resistant.
In 2019, he was thrilled to come back to NZ in order to do a PhD at the University of Otago in the nutrition and genetics of honeybees.