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.

Austrian Citizen Science Conference 2023 in Linz

This year’s Austrian Citizen Science Conference took place from April 19 to 21, 2023 at the Johannes Kepler University in Linz, Austria. The conference was initiated by the network “Österreich forscht” (BOKU Vienna) and in cooperation with Ars Electronica and the Ludwig Boltzmann Gesellschaft.

Robert Brodschneider and Kristina Gratzer from the University of Graz participated together with approximately 150 other Citizen Science enthusiasts.

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It has started!

INSIGNIA-EU is now running in 27 EU countries, with 23 languages, having 316 Citizens Scientist using 632 bee colonies. It is with great pleasure and excitement that we have a short talk on the 4th sampling day for the startup round. Have a look.

Dry practice on INSIGNIA-EU sampling for Austrian citizen scientists

Project preparations are in full swing throughout the EU – also in Austria!

All Austrian participants got their tool boxes, so it was time to enter the next stage . Thus, on April 14th,  we organized a workshop for beekeepers in Austria. The main goal was to give instructions on how to do the sampling for the INSIGNIA-EU fullstudy 2023. As a physical workshop was not possible at this time, we invited all 10 participants to attend to the online worshop, which turned out to work very well. For one person it was not possible to take part, but thanks to advances in technology, we were able to record and provide the entire workshop.

Kristina set-up an empty demonstration beehive and went through the whole sample collection process. The citizen scientists were encouraged to interrupt and ask questions at any time.

Thank you all for the participation and the pleasant atmosphere and interest and good luck to all INSIGNIA-EU citizen scientists for the study start next week!

Kristina Gratzer und Robert Brodschneider

We are on our way

Two INSIGNIAS just finished the very last packing of the toolboxes. They are tired, but very happy. Have a listen!

Sampling dates public

All the sampling dates for the INSIGNIA project is now public. This is important for the Citizens Scientist as well as the coordinators, since all people want to plane their summer and especially in regard to beekeeping activities. For all sampling windows the Citizens Scientist need to pick one of the 4 days available, where they can do sampling. So, for sampling round 1, you can choose to make your sampling on one of the days 4th or 5th or 6th or 7th of May. We also ask our Citizens Scientist to cooperate with neighbor beekeepers, in the case our Citizens Scientist themselves are not able to sample in one of the sampling rounds. For INSIGNIA it is important to have a full as possibly sampling.

Curiosity – is the main driver

From all the consortium we wish happy birthday to Sjef van der Steen, Netherlands on his 71 years birthday.

Sjef is the coordinator of the INSIGNIA project. Others would say: Why not just play golf? Sjef would reply: Why play golf, if you can run such an exciting project as INSIGNIA!

Happy birthday – 71 is just a number as long as you have curiosity on life.

 

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.

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