Our Team

I am the inventor of BuzzCopper. After a career building computer systems for both government and private sector clients I retired to spend more time working on my own projects, including micro-electronics. Having already decked out our house with gadgets I heard about the Asian Hornet problem on the radio and thought it would be a simple project to tackle. It took rather longer than expected. By June 2025 I had a working prototype, I approached a few beekeepers with it and found a ready audience. The initial group of volunteers has grown serendipitously into a rich collection of skills and enthusiasm. With their help and expertise BuzzCopper is being rebuilt for 2026 better and stronger than ever.

It’s a trite phrase but I’m doing this to ‘give something back’. This is a chance to do something positive and unambiguously worthwhile in the face of a world that has become selfish and short-sighted.

I am not a beekeeper.

I heard about the Buzzcopper project through my local Beekeeping association's AHAT coordinator and was keen to get involved and help out where possible with my expertise from my day job as an embedded systems engineer at an engineering company in North Yorkshire. I'm an active Beekeeper with seven hives across two apiaries in the Harrogate area and a committee member of Harrogate and Ripon Beekeepers Association.

Our wonderful bees are under such a multitude of threats ranging from varroa mites to the gradually changing climate, and now we face an additional threat in the form of the Asian Hornet. An opportunity to help out with a brilliant project that will help to monitor the incursion into the UK was one I couldn't miss!

Given our first credible sighting of 2026 this year was in Doncaster means the threat has already likely overwintered in the North, and we need to do everything we can to generate as much data on the spread of the Asian Hornet into the UK to help identify possible nest locations and control the spread and, if possible, prevent the Asian Hornet from being completely established in the UK.

Soldering and novice 3D printer but learning fast.

Member of the BBKA and vice chairman of Sevenoaks and Tunbridge Wells branch of KBKA
Branch AHAT.

I have 3 colonies of my own but assist with both our branch apiaries so kept quite busy

Being in Kent means we get a lot of sightings to deal with and Buzzcopper is a way of dealing with these apex predators more efficiently and will be a good tool in our arsenal.