A new popular article…

As the INSIGNIA-EU project draws to a close, the results of the vast numbers of samples collected in 2023 are being collated, analysed and modelled. A popular article has been written and published in the English language Beekeepers Quarterly magazine: https://www.northernbeebooks.co.uk/products/the-beekeepers-quarterly/ https://beekeepers.peacockmagazines.com/ It is now being translated into many languages and will be published in various beekeeping magazines around Europe. The article describes the meeting of the INSIGNIA-EU Consortium in Bregança, Portugal in March, and the presentation of the results to the European Commission in Brussels, Belgium in April. Some key results are also presented.

 

Last online meeting before we meet in Portugal…

Today was the last online Plenary Meeting for the core INSIGNIA-EU consortium before we meet in person in just over two weeks in Bragança, Portugal, courtesy of Alice Pinto and her colleagues at the Instituto Politécnico de Bragança. The laboratories in Greece, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain have been working flat out over the winter to analyse the thousands of samples collected by the citizen scientist beekeepers in all 27 EU countries during the 2023 beekeeping season. Results of many of the matrices are now complete, and have been handed over to the consortium’s statisticians and modellers for further analysis. The group were here looking at some of the results for pollen composition, which show the proportion of different pollen types over the season in different apiaries, but they would not look out of place on the walls of an art gallery! In the near future some of the results will be passed to the National Coordinators in each country for distribution to the individual beekeepers. The aim of the Bragança meeting will be to review all of the results of the project ahead of a meeting with the European Commission in Brussels in April.

Meet the Queens of INSIGNIA-EU from Poland

Poland joined the INSIGNIA-EU project with 20 citizen-scientist beekeepers, of which as many as five were ladies, which, project-wise, was a rarity.

Each of them is of course a beekeeper, but other than that they also have other cool jobs and interests.

The national coordinator for Poland, as well as a citizen scientist, was Dr Anna Gajda. On a daily basis she is a head of the Laboratory of Bee Diseases at the Institute of Veterinary Medicine, Warsaw University of Life Sciences in Warsaw. She runs a diagnostic lab, both for beekeepers and their sick colonies, and for science, researching long standing and emerging pathogens in both managed and wild bees. She does a lot of extension work for beekeepers and veterinarians, giving talks and practical courses on bee disease control and prevention. In her free time she enjoys photography, travel and birdwatching.

DVM Ewa Mazur is a young scientist. She works as an assistant in the Laboratory of Bee Diseases at Warsaw University of Life Sciences. Her main research topic is the problem of winter bee colony losses in Poland. She also works as an advisor for beekeepers, as she has veterinary specialization in bee diseases. Bees are her great passion – she takes care of a small apiary and loves to observe wild bees. In her free time, Ewa practices yoga and cooks vegetarian dishes. Continue reading “Meet the Queens of INSIGNIA-EU from Poland”

National Coordinators Cafe and the start of sampling

Today’s regular National Coordinators’ Cafe was the first since the start of the 2023 sampling in all 27 EU Member States. This was an opportunity for National Coordinators to meet informally online with members of the consortium to sort out any problems that might occur. There were some questions about different hive designs needing slight modifications to what is being done, but overall it seems that all is running smoothly with much enthusiasm from the citizen scientist beekeepers involved.

INSIGNIA-EU meets with European Commission in Brussels…

A successful meeting has been held at the European Commission DG Environment, funders of INSIGNIA-EU, in Brussels, Belgium, attended by consortium members from 11 different countries, together with representatives of other European Commission bodies and the European Parliament. The results of the pilot studies carried out in three European countries during 2022, together with other preliminary investigations, were reported. These studies compared a range of different matrices to sample a wide range of different environmental pollutants. The most effective combination of matrices which have now been selected for implementation, together comprise an integrated, non-destructive sampling regime, which will in 2023 be carried out by citizen scientist beekeepers in their bee hives in all 27 EU countries throughout the season. In a few weeks a practical meeting will be held in Wageningen, Netherlands attended by the INSIGNIA-EU National Coordinators of each country to receive training in the sampling techniques to be used by their citizen scientists.

Thanks for the hospitality!

The INSIGNIA-EU consortium meeting at Nea Moudania, Greece. Most members of the consortium were able to attend in person, with others joining virtually. Thanks to Fani Hatjina and colleagues for making us so welcome!

The first National Coordinators café

Today we held the first INSIGNIA-EU “National Coordinators café”. This was attended by most of the National Coordinators who will be organising the sampling programme in all 27 EU countries in 2023. It was an opportunity for them to meet each other informally, and to discuss practical questions about the programme with members of the core INSIGNIA-EU team. Selection of participating citizen scientist beekeepers for 2023 is currently underway, and many volunteers have come forward. The selection process is important to ensure that large countries like Spain and Germany have an even geographical distribution of beekeepers, whilst also taking account of different land uses such as cities, agricultural and semi natural areas, to provide contrasts in the likely levels of the various types of pollution experienced. Matters discussed include the practicalities of sampling in northern parts of Finland and Sweden where hives may be covered in snow for long periods, and how to arrange a sampling programme to take account of the vacation plans of the citizen scientists. All agreed that it was a useful meeting and that there will be regular follow up meetings in the future.

David G Biron

We were all very sad to hear of the recent death after a short illness of David G Biron, who was our French partner in the original INSIGNIA project. David worked as a Senior Research Scientist at the Ecology and Environment Institute of CNRS at Clermont-Ferrand, France. He was well known in the field of interactions between hosts, parasites and pollutants in ecosystems. He was the director of the Zone Atelier Territoire Uranifères using and developing remote observation sensors to assess the risks of natural radioactivity enhanced by natural or man-made factors in ecosystems such as springs or a disused uranium mine. He was the manager of the “EcoHealth” working group of the CNRS Zones Ateliers Network. His work on interactions between parasites and their hosts, especially deciphering and understanding host-parasite cross-talk by using “parasito-proteomics” led to the idea of “population proteomics”, a new emerging field in proteomics. He published many scientific papers, on a range of topics and organisms. His work on bees included studies on the gut parasite Nosema ceranae and its interactions with pesticides such as fipronil and thiacloprid. He contributed to the chapter on toxicology in the COLOSS BEEBOOK. Our condolences go out to his family.

Kick-Off Meeting for INSIGNIA-EU

The new project INSIGNIA-EU got underway today with the virtual Kick Off Meeting, which was attended by members of the consortium, representatives of the European Commission Directorate Generals for the Environment and Health and Food Safety, members of the European Parliament, and representatives of several EU agencies including the European Food Safety Authority. Hosted by Vujadin Kovacevic of DG Environment, the meeting was introduced by Martin Hojsik MEP, of the European Parliament Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety who outlined the support of the Parliament for this wide ranging environmental study. Continue reading “Kick-Off Meeting for INSIGNIA-EU”

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