Podcast on where we are after samplinground 7, we are so close to the final sampling round and there are samples all over europe on the way to the laboratories. We are so excited. So how are we doing. Listen to the sum up.
Portugal is started, even in rain!
The national coordinators of Portugal Alice Pinto and Andreia Quaresma from Instituto Politécnico de Bragança made the big tour, visiting all Citizens Scientist to support the start up of INSIGNIA sampling in Portugal. Have look on the nice video and see how and what they did. Even Portugal has “not so nice weather”. Really good investment of the coordinators. Secures a safe startup and getting closely connected to the Citizens Scientist.
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.
Continue reading “Austrian Citizen Science Conference 2023 in Linz”
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!
First meeting with all the 27 National Coordinators
And exiting workshop took place the last day (13th-14th February 2023) in Wageningen. Here we meet for the first time all our national coordinators from all EU countries. We did learn each other to know, we did practice, we did discus and we did socialize. Listen to our podcast.
INSIGNIA presenting themselves for EU
INSIGNIA-EU meets with European Commission in Brussels. Time for a short podcast on our meeting and what was going in Brussels.
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.