Rui Gonçalves

My fields of interest are related to sustainable food production, entrepreneurship, and honeybees. I've been working with bees for 10+ years. At first, by supporting my hobbyist uncle who thought a guy with a background in biology and environmental studies, would understand his bees better. The first encounter with this "superorganism" caused such fascination that led me to start Zee - Honey goods, a synergetic food company merging honeybees and aromatic herbs. Shortly after, I assisted and co-founded a local beekeeping association, created consultancy services for local farmers and was awarded an Erasmus for entrepreneurs where I met Prof. Geraldine Wright.

With Prof. Wright and a group of international researchers, I helped to create a new start-up, Apix, to formulate a superfood for honeybees that aims to sustain them for longer and generate more resilient offspring. Bees reached their limiting capacity in absorbing more stressors to their colonies - their Achilles heel is access to healthy nutrition.

Nowadays, in between diverse tasks, such as nutritional research projects, beekeeping and even entrepreneurship, are some of the positions taken in this lab.

Always happy to talk about bees.

Contact details: rui.goncalves@zoo.ox.ac.uk

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