pan-european assessment, monitoring, and mitigation of stressors on the health of bees

Trinity College Dublin is seeking programmers for a post-doctoral research assistant (PDRA) position to develop an agent-based model for bumble bees, to complement similar models for honey bees and solitary bees, contribute to integrative analysis of bee health and production of tools for risk assessment, and develop a multi-species Environmental Risk Assessment tool, as part of the PoshBee project. The successful applicant who will be based in the research group of...

"10 years advancing ecosystem services science, policy and practice for a sustainable future"  In October 2019, PoshBee joined the 10th World Conference of the Ecosystem Services Partnership, held in the Leibniz University Hannover, Germany. About 800 delegates from altogether 66 countries participated in the event.  The conference gathered researchers, policymakers and practitioners working towards a better understanding and application of the concept of...

A new EPA-supported "Pollival" study led by Trinity claims that both the market and non-market values of pollinators in Ireland are currently greatly underestimated. The report has shown that even if we just consider locally produced food crops, loss of pollinators in Ireland could risk a €20-59 million hit per year in crop production. Pollinators are important to society for a lot of reasons – they ensure productivity in many of our fruit and vegetable...

The PoshBee BUZZ, our annual newsletter, had its first issue published to accomodate news about our first year, where we've set the pace of the project and had already started active fieldwork.  Find out more in the newsletter, and don't miss to SUBSCRIBE for our next issues! PoshBee's first

Newly published research looks into the association between the deformed wing virus and the parasitic mite Varroa destructor as a major cause of worldwide honeybee colony losses. The article featured in Proceedings of the Royal Society B studies the mechanisms through which the mite acts as a vector of the viral pathogen and can trigger its replication in infected bees. The authors develop and test a novel hypothesis that mite feeding destabilizes viral...

PoshBee was featured twice in the Federation Of Irish Beekeepers Associations (FIBKA) magazine An Beachaire. The magazine reaches out monthly to around 3200 beekeepers across Ireland and beyond. While An Beachaire's first issue for 2019 proved a perfect medium for a quick call out to the community in search of apple tree orchards to place 3 beehives as part of the project's planned monitoring activities, the April issue just published contains a detailed report on the PoshBee...

A recently published paper in Nature Communications uses meta analysis to prove the importance of pollinator functional diversity for increasing pollination and yield.  The role of insect pollination in enhancing crop yield and quality represents one of the most widely appreciated ecosystem services, not least for its contribution to the 580 million tons of oilseeds grown worldwide annually. How insects promote crop pollination remains poorly understood in terms of the...

The PoshBee fieldwork has started in the UK, Ireland, Spain and Italy! Reseach teams, together will beekeepers and agricultural partners sample honey bees, bumble bees and solitary bees to quantify the field-realistic exposure hazards for bees in terms of chemicals, nutrition and pathogens. Photos from PoshBee's fieldwork. The research team participating in the fieldwork has the overall goal to establish and implement a site network across eight countries incorporating...

A PoshBee workshop focused on the protocols, demonstrations and practices to be applied when taking the samples on apis, bombus and osmia colonies took place in the last week of February 2019 in CREA in Bologna. PoshBee team at workshop in Bologna. During the workshop live colonies were available to demonstrate the skills required to take the necessary samples toward achieving the desired outcomes. The amount of bees, sentinel hive set-up, criteria for landscape, protocols for site...

Group photo from PoshBee's first annyal meeting. PoshBee partners and stakeholders gathered in Murcia, Spain for the project's First Annual General Meeting. On 10-11 January 2019 the University of Murcia kindly welcomed over 60 participants to discuss further project developments on the way towards enhancing the sustainable health of bees and pollination services in Europe.  An overview of the past year showed successful first steps into the project and high...

In October, PoshBee joined the ESP Regional Europe conference 2018, held in San Sebastian, Spain in order to reach out to nearly 500 attendants from diverse research and industry backgrounds. Themed Ecosystem services in a changing world: From theory to practice, the conference was dedicated to bringing scientific knowledge and recent findings relevant to ecosystem services to the roundtables of policy makers and stakeholders. Thereby, the event proved a perfect fit for...

"Scientists have mapped the distribution of bumblebees in Europe and created a predictive map that can be used to monitor and mitigate bumblebee decline." reports the European Joint Research Center in one of its latest headlines. Scientists from the EU-funded STEP project and  the JRC have mapped the distribution of the 47 most common bumblebee species, which are known to be important pollinators due to their distinctive physical characteristics such as body size, hair and...

Newly funded EU Horizon 2020 project PoshBee supports healthy bee populations, sustainable beekeeping and pollination across Europe The PoshBee kick-off meeting took place on 27 and 28 August in Paris, France. Over 50 scientists, experts and stakeholders of 42 partner organisations from 14 European countries met for the start of the five year research and innovation action. The meeting also covered topics like data exchange, publication policy and successful project...

PoshBee has been officially approved to receive funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 773921. The project will officially start in June 2018 and will run for 5 years. Standing for "Pan-european assessment, monitoring, and mitigation of stressors on the health of bees", PoshBee aims to support healthy bee populations, sustainable beekeeping and pollination across Europe. Integrating the knowledge and experience of...

EFSA’s updated risk assessments on the potential risks to bees from neonicotinoid pesticides was published on 28 February 2018. The assessments for clothianidin, imidacloprid and thiamethoxam was finalised following a final round of consultation with pesticide experts in the Member States. The European Commission imposed restrictions on the use of clothianidin, imidacloprid and thiamethoxam in 2013 following earlier risk assessments carried out by EFSA. Find the updated report...