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

Beebread is an essential food source for honeybees, bumblebees and solitary bees, which store pollen in their nests. However, this pollen can often be contaminated by pesticides, which also affects the beebread. As a result, contaminated beebread is amongst the main sources of dietary exposure to pesticides across all bee species. Nevertheless, it is still insufficiently analysed despite its ability to store pesticides for long periods of time. Flying bees. In this context, a recent...

A new research article published in the open-access online journal Nature Ecology & Evolution presents insightful ways to improve the pesticide-use data for the European Union. Photo courtesy: @franki/unsplash.com Access to pesticide-use data is important to properly assess the harmful effects of pesticides on human and ecosystem health. That is why the European Commission has proposed to reform the EU legal framework of statistics on agricultural input and output in February...

No evidence that Glyphosate alone, or in combination with a common parasite, has negative lethal or sublethal effects on bumble bees Glyphosate is the most commonly used pesticide in the world, and is widely used in agriculture. While glyphosate has been deemed ‘bee-safe’ by regulators, some emerging evidence studies suggest that it has negative effects on bees. For that reason, discovering whether glyphosate alone, or in combination with other stressors, is detrimental to bee...

In this PoshBee video project partners from BioPark Archamps and CNRS demonstrate the analysis of bee haemolymph samples with MALDI BeeTyping®. They perform spectral analysis, with the conclusions reached through this method being of significant importance for gaining in-epth knowledge about beehealth.

This PoshBee training video titled "PoshBee research: Nectar extraction from bees" was created by PoshBee researchers from ANSES. The video demonstrates the PoshBee methods for nectar extraction from bee stomachs performed by the PoshBee researchers at the ANSES Sophia Antipolis laboratory.

A research article recently published in the Environmental International journal provides insight into the effects that the exposure to the product Closer containing the insecticide sulfoxaflor and the product Amistar containing the fungicide azoxystrobin has on bumble bees. The article called "Fungicide and insecticide exposure adversely impacts bumble bees and pollination services under semi-field conditions" shows that Closer (sulfoxaflor insecticide) led to reduced colony...

Pollinators are suffering declines worldwide, and pesticides are thought to be the main driver of their decline. In this context, a lot of research effort has been put into understanding and regulating the active ingredients in pesticides. Nevertheless, the additional components in pesticide formulations are often overlooked and understudied. Bumblebee on a flower. To make up for this oversight, a new PoshBee research article, called Co‐formulant in a commercial fungicide...

In this video, Agroscope researchers conduct a semi-field experiment to investigate the effects of a pesticide on a cavity nesting solitary bee species - Osmia Bicornis.

In this video, PoshBee researchers from the Anses Sophia Antipolis laboratory show the procedure for pesticide residue analysis in nectar regurgitated by honey bees and bumble bees.

A new PoshBee video titled "PoshBee research: The PoshBee database" demonstrates the digital data storage platform Poshbase, which serves for gathering and exchange of data between researchers. The video is part of a new PoshBee video series which displays various research techniques and methods used by project researchers, including measuring chemical exposure, pathogens and nutrition in honey bees, bumblebees, and solitary bees. The researchers from the Anses Sophia-Antipolis...

In this video PoshBee researchers from the Anses Sophia Antipolis laboratory demonstrate the process of analysis of pathogens in honey bees, bumble bees and solitary bees.

The PoshBee project was presented at the 2021 edition of the EU Pollinator Week which took place online between 27-30 September. Project partner Dr. Dalel Askri of BioPark Archamps participated in the European Research Projects: Monitoring Pollinators and Their Stressors session, which focused on the overview of some of the EU research projects gathering data of the status of EU pollinators or the stressing factors that can affect them, such as environmental pollutants, pathogens,...

In an effort to increase the project’s visibility and improve the dissemination of all publicly available project outputs, PoshBee has recently launched an open research collection in the Research Ideas and Outcomes (RIO) journal. The PoshBee Project Outcomes collection in RIO aims to broaden the outreach of project results by publishing not only standard scientific articles, but also other pieces, covering the entire research cycle in a comprehensive manner. The collection  will...

A research article recently published in the British Ecological Society’s Functional Ecology journal, examines how the quantity of floral resources affects pollinator activity and how this relates to the structure and robustness of pollination networks. The paper titled "Patterns of pollination interactions at community-level are related to the type and quantity of floral resources" focuses on the relationship between quantity of floral resources and the number of flower visits...

A new PoshBee paper was recently published in the international, peer reviewed journal "Royal Society Open Science". The article titled "Pollen nutrition fosters honeybee tolerance to pesticides" evaluates the toxicity of acute exposure and chronic exposures to field realistic and higher concentrations of azoxystrobin (fungicide) and sulfoxaflor (insecticide) in honeybees, and the bee mortality rate in dependence with pollen diets of differing quality. The authors of the...

This PoshBee training video titled "Specialised Equipment for Honeybee Studies" was created by PoshBee researchers Matt Allan (Atlantic Pollination Ltd.) and Robin Dean (The Red Beehive Company). Matt and Robin carry out semi-field studies on honeybees in the UK. They have built enclosures and inside them, they grow certain crops and apply the stressors, the pressures that they want to study, to see what impact they have. In this video, the researchers examine the impact of the nutrition that...

A new PoshBee research article, published in the open access journal Science of the Total Environment studies the effects of sulfoxaflor insecticide and azoxystrobin fungicide on honeybees in a semi-field experiment with actual exposure. The article titled (Sulfoxaflor insecticide and azoxystrobin fungicide have no major impact on honeybees in a realistic-exposure semi-field experiment) presents the results of a peer-reviewed field realistic study. Giovanni Tamburini, Dimitry...

A new PoshBee video showcases laboratory experiments on pesticide exposure and pollen diet effects on bees. The team of PoshBee researchers from INRAE, France, led by Prof. Yves Le Conte, and including PoshBee researcher Léna Barascou and researcher Cédric Alaux, performed laboratory experiments aiming to measure the effects of pollen diet on the sensitivity to pesticides in honeybees. The video is created and narrated by PoshBee PhD student Lena Barascou. Pollen abundance...

A new PoshBee research article, published in the open access Journal of Pollination Ecology, studies the pollinating insects associated with twо mass-flowering crops - apple and oilseed rape, and compares the insect fauna of the main crop with that in the field margins in the grass-dominated agricultural landscapes of Ireland. Location of study sites. Numbers correspond with descriptions in Appendix I. Image created with QGIS software. Source: Bottero, I., Hodge, S.,...

A research article recently published in the Science of The Total Environment journal provides insight into the effects that the consumption of pesticide sulfoxaflor has on bumble bees. The article called "Sulfoxaflor and nutritional deficiency synergistically reduce survival and fecundity in bumblebees" shows that depending on the level of exposure to the novel insecticide, both lethal and sublethal effects occur, thus threatening bumblebee health.   Graphical...