The instructors belong to the “Teaching body” validated by the Italian National Register of Experts in the Sensory Analysis of Honey.
Gian Luigi Marcazzan
Gian Luigi Marcazzan is a researcher and technical manager for honey quality control by chemical and sensory analysis at the Council for Agricultural Research and Economics (CREA) in Bologna, Italy for 26 years. He is the leader of the Honey Sensory group within the International Honey Commission, the leading organization to develop methods for honey quality evaluation. He is the President of the Italian Register of Experts in the Sensory Analysis of Honey with more than 25 years of experience as a teacher and professional honey taster. From 2008, Gian Luigi works as a panel leader for the international honey competition BioMiel. Gian Luigi studies the composition of royal jelly and propolis to open up the knowledge on the composition in order to characterize and control the quality. He is also a beekeeper and breeds bees for the production of swarms and honey.
Raffaele Dall’Olio
Raffaele Dall’Olio is a beekeeper and animal biologist with a master’s degree in honeybee pathogens diagnostic, skilled in artificial insemination of honeybee queens. He has more than 10 years of experience in honeybee research and teaching focusing on genetic conservation of honeybee breeds, detection of pathogens and viruses, improving the quality of beekeeping products. He’s a member of the international research networks COLOSS (on Colony Losses) and RNSBB (about Sustainable Bee Breeding). Raffaele has commercial experience with 150 hives in Tuscany, Italy and queen-rearing experience and manuka honey in New Zealand. As an internationally sought out speaker including Apimondia and the European Conference of Apidology, Raffaele has more than 10 years’ experience as a teacher and professional honey taster and as a panel leader for the Italian National Register of Professional Honey Taster and member of official Panel Test at CRA-API lab since 2005 and in several Honey Contests. In 2015, he found “AsSenso”, sensory analyses as an R&D tool for businesses. Raffaele also has written for national beekeeping magazines in Italy such as L’apicoltore italiano, Lapis and APOidea..
Lucia Piana
Lucia Piana is a biologist and she spent her entire professional life on honey related topics. For the first 12 years, she worked as a quality manager in a honey company, doing honey analysis (physico-chemical, melissopalynological and sensory). Since 1991 she has worked as a consultant for different companies, research institutions and beekeeping organizations, in Italy as in other countries, mainly in the field of honey quality and teaching sensory analysis of honey. In 2006 she founded her own company, now Piana Ricerca e Consulenza Srl, a laboratory and consultancy company offering a full range of services, mainly melissopalynological analysis and honey tasting courses. Since 1981, she has been the technical coordinator of the leading Italian honey contest, organized by Osservatorio Nazionale Miele. She is one of the founders of the Italian National Register of Honey Sensory Experts and she continues teaching in training courses for the Register. To date, she has conducted more than 450 sensory training courses and seminars, spoke in more than 350 lectures and conferences and wrote more than 150 technical articles.
Andrea Tibaldi
After graduating in Mechanical Engineering (2002) and later (2006) in nutrition biology, Andrea Tibaldi has dedicated his professional life to food and health disclosure. In 2003 he founded www.cibo360.it, a website with more than 8000 pages on healthy living, food, sport, gastronomy, traditional and healthy cooking. In 2007 he started a cooking school, which now runs 25 courses a year, in most of them he is also the main teacher. He has been a member of the Italian Register of Experts in the Sensory Analysis of Honey since 2009 and a teacher on the Register since 2013. He is also a wine, cheese, and olive oil taster.