Belgium is one of the countries in which nine apiaries will be selected for the 2020 trials. The Flemish beekeepers were informed about the Insignia project in October 2019. Beekeeping in Flanders is much more developed than the front page of the magazine suggests. It is a giant step from making straw skeps to applying honeybee colonies as a monitoring tool for pesticides. An application of the honeybee, completely non-existing when the straw skeps were developed some centuries ago. The big difference between beekeeping with the skep and the Insignia study is that bees in the skep were killed to harvest the honey and that the Insignia project aims to result in a non-invasive (= no bees sampled and killed) citizen scientist sampling protocol; a progress in bee- welfare and bee research.
Time to clean up!
Denmark. Actually, we already did 2 weeks ago. We did sample in 4 apiaries this season. It became 10 samplings. Between the lines some had 11 sampling, and even more between the line in one Danish apiary we continue to sample 13 times, just to have that number in our records. It has been very exciting to belong to one of the 4 pilot countries in this project. Samples were taken every 2th week very regular during the season. In total this gave 604 samples of pollen, beeholdtubes, apistrips, beebread and a single time honey sample as well.
Science with communication
How easy can science be on your own, no protests, no objections, bright ideas and always being right? However that’s not science, that is vanity.
Science can only blossom and flourish in cooperation and respectful communication with each other. That is why the GoTo Telemeetings occupy a prominent place in the Insignia consortium. The course of the pilot study, new ideas, results clarification and evaluations and any issue of whatever importance are discussed in these meetings. First in small groups of specialists in the consortium to be broadened up with more subjects-involved participants in the course of the subject.
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Good sample logistics
