Abigail Chapman

The Hidden Costs of Virus Infection on Queen Success

Abbi Chapman is beginning the final year of her PhD studies in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at UBC, where she also completed her BSc Hon. in Biochemistry in 2015. She is supervised by Dr. Leonard Foster and has been lucky to work in close collaboration with Dr. Alison McAfee on many projects. Abbi’s thesis is focused on identifying the impacts of virus infection on honey bee queen fertility and investigating a potential trade-off between reproduction and immunity. She found this focus after discovering a potential link between virus loads and queen failure in a survey of BC queens she and Ali conducted in 2019 in collaboration with the BCBBA. They hope this work will serve as one of the building blocks for better understanding and ultimately improving queen health.

Abbi began beekeeping in a research setting in 2017 under the storied guidance of Heather Higo and Julia Common and has fallen steadily more in love with being in the apiary ever since. She is proud to have won student research awards from many Canadian and American beekeeping organizations and greatly enjoys opportunities to connect with beekeepers locally and beyond by speaking at bee club meetings. She was fortunate to spend this spring learning from Emily Huxter and after graduating Abbi plans on joining the BC industry as a queen producer, putting the knowledge she’s accumulated over the years to practical use.

(P.S. thank you to Rhonda Thygesen for the bee yard portrait!)

Abigail Chapman

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