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

Towards a better understanding of exposure routes and toxicological and ecological impacts of chemical pollution on terrestrial biodiversity: EC funds two new projects on environmental risk assessment Wild fauna and flora are facing variable and challenging environmental disturbances. One of the animal groups that is most impacted by these disturbances are pollinators, which face multiple threats, driven to a huge extent by the spread of anthropogenic chemicals, such as pesticides. In an...

This press release was originally published on EurekAlert! and AlphaGalileo.  A new study has confirmed that pesticides, commonly used in farmland, significantly harm bumblebees. Data from 106 sites across 8 European countries show that despite tightened pesticide regulations, more needs to be done."When you step outside the laboratory, a challenge of ecotoxicology is to capture effect of real-world practices at organism-relevant scales." said Dr. Charlie Nicholson, co-lead...

Last month the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Uppsala (SLU) hosted an open house to celebrate the launch of their new center for bees - "Center for Bee Research & Extension". The centre will be a platform for researchers in beekeeping, wild bees and pollination with the aim of strengthening research and education on honeybees in Sweden.  More than 100 beekeepers, bee health consultants and scientists attended the two-day programme with lectures from...

PoshBee is dedicated to translating the knowledge acquired during its five-year run into actionable science-based policy recommendations. In this relation, earlier this year the project launched its policy brief collection. This collection is now complete with the final PoshBee policy brief recently published in the project’s RIO collection and on the Horizon Results Platform.  Cover of the final PoshBee policy brief. The final PoshBee policy brief provides novel insights...

PoshBee continues to make waves even after its official conclusion in May 2023. At the Apimondia 2023 event held in Chile, project partner Joachim de Miranda from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences took the stage to shed light on the enduring impact and legacy of PoshBee. Joachim de Miranda presenting PoshBee at Apimondia 2023 During his presentation titled "The PoshBee Legacy: Summary of a 5-year EU-wide project on the effects of pesticides, pathogens, and...

In an effort to protect pollinator health, PoshBee recently published two research-based policy briefs. Building on the knowledge acquired during the project’s five-year run, these briefs focus on improving pollinator management and addressing the challenges posed by multiple stressors on managed pollinators. PoshBee's Policy briefs. (Policy brief 1) Mitigating multiple stressors on managed pollinators: Effectiveness and feasibility of implementing response options The...

The European Research Executive Agency (REA) together with PoshBee conducted a workshop in October 2022 to assess the current state of pollinators, with the findings now presented in a newly published EU report titled "Opportunities and knowledge gaps for EU Research and Innovation on pollinators". The workshop aimed to identify key areas of knowledge requiring attention and discuss potential solutions with the support of several EU-funded projects safeguarding...

PoshBee joined forces with B-GOOD, Safeguard and the National Museum of Natural History at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (NMNHS) to organise the exhibition ‘The pollinators we can't live without’. It delves into four key topics: (i) What do we know about pollinators; (ii) What is threatening them; (iii) How can we protect them; and (iv) How is science contributing to their conservation. A visitor reading the information panel presentingPoshBee's semi-field...

This press release was originally published by EurekAlert! and AlphaGalileo.On June 28, 2023, at 6 PM (EEST), the National Museum of Natural History at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences in Sofia will present the temporary exhibition ‘The pollinators we can’t live without’. The new exhibition of the National Museum of Natural History at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (NMNHS) focuses on the essence and importance of pollinators. The attendees of the...

Pesticides pose a significant threat to pollinators and can have various effects on their health. One way in which pesticides can harm pollinators such as bumblebees is by affecting their gut microbiome, which in turn impacts their immune system and ability to resist parasites. Glyphosate, Crithidia bombi, or their combination have limited effects on bacterial composition of the bumblebee microbiome. (A) Bacterial diversity was evaluated by 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing. (B)...

This press release was published by EurekAlert! and AlphaGalileo.  The EU-funded PoshBee project successfully ended in May 2023, delivering a collection of evidence, tools and policy recommendations to support healthy bee populations.Bee species are essential for both human and planetary well-being, but they face many threats causing their decline around the globe. To help reverse this decline, back in 2018, PoshBee set out to provide a holistic understanding of how chemicals...

PoshBee’s Final newsletter has just been released offering a closer look at what PoshBee achieved in its final year and the legacy it leaves behind.  PoshBee's Final newsletter Download the newsletter here! You can also read our previous newsletters

A recent ‘Success story’ published by the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Research and Innovation calls attention to PoshBee’s evidence, tools and policy proposals to enhance bee health. PoshBee's Success story Besides celebrating PoshBee’s legacy so close to the project’s ending in May 2023, the story also includes the reflections of the project’s coordinator Mark Brown in terms of how PoshBee supported healthy bee...

In many types of applied and fundamental studies involving honeybees, it is necessary to evaluate the populations of adult bees and brood of various ages, as well as assess quantities of nectar, honey, bee bread and pollen. In order to establish how the structure of the colony changes over time, such assessments may be made repeatedly.  ColEval: Honeybee COLony Structure EVALuation for Field Surveys (Hernandes 2020) is a common method for such assessments where reference photographs...

A new PoshBee research paper explores the impact of landscape heterogeneity, weather and climatic conditions on the abundance of several broad taxonomic groups of flower-visiting insects, in 128 crop-dominated sites across Europe. The paper highlights the importance of understanding the role of taxon-specific responses to changes in land use and climate for the continued delivery of pollination services to pollinator-dependent crops. (A) Location of the 128 sites – oilseed rape...

In order to provide stakeholders with valuable insight into PoshBee's research process and contemporary research techniques, the project has produced 17 training videos. The latest one – created by PoshBee partners from CNRS and BioPark Archamps – presents the MALDI mass spectrometry imaging (MSI) strategy to localise and monitor peptide changes in whole honey bee bodies following an experimental model of exposure to biotic and abiotic stressors....

In order to contribute to an improved bee health capacity, PoshBee members produced 17 training videos demonstrating project research techniques in practice. PoshBee partners from CNRS and BioPark Archamps recently added a new video to the project’s collection presenting the Bottom-Up Mass Spectrometry-Based Proteomics workflow used for bee haemolymph analysis. It aims to identify/quantify proteins, detect impacted biological pathways and discover new markers of exposure to abiotic and...

In order to demonstrate the project’s protocols in practice, PoshBee partners have produced a rich training program containing 17 videos. They cover topics ranging from nectar extraction from bees to pesticide risk assessment experiments on wild bee species. One of the most popular videos from this program – created by PoshBee partners from CNRS and BioPark Archamps – demonstrates the analysis of bee haemolymph samples with MALDI matrix spotting and spectral...

Since 2018, academics, beekeepers and farmers have been joining forces in PoshBee to support healthy bee populations, sustainable beekeeping and pollination across Europe. To provide a concise overview of their main results, PoshBee published a special project Legacy brochure which summarises the key findings of each work package, thus offering a glimpse into what PoshBee achieved in the past five years. PoshBee's Legacy brochure Although there is still a long way to go when it...

Pollinators play a vital role in maintaining biodiversity and agricultural production worldwide, but they are susceptible to various infectious and parasitic agents (IPAs). To better assess the exposure of honey bees to IPAs, researchers have developed discriminative and quantitative molecular methods. These methods produce large datasets that need to be summarised for interpretation. Graphical abstract of the paper. A new PoshBee paper describes the calculation of three types of...