Author: Sjef van der Steen

The best way to learn all the ins and outs of Insignia sampling is simply doing it. Flemming and Ole were so kind as to invite me and Valters to assist in the 5^th sampling. Due to mine and Valters agenda, the 5^th sampling in Denmark was brought forward to Thursday and Friday 4 and 5 July. It was an interesting learning experience for myself and Valters to prepare package and coding,  to do the pollen collection,  taking out and inserting respectively the old and new APIStrips and Beehold tubes, collecting beebread and emptying the pollen trap, to have an indication of the time and energy spent on the labour before and after the field work. I learned/ was confirmed that coding/ sample preparation requires a consequent and accurate effort, beebread picking takes time in two ways, looking for the best frame and the picking itself, the facility of the APIStrip and Beehold tube change and the every time wonderful view of the diversity of pollen in the trap.  All samples are stored in the freezer.

Just a reminder for sending the samples latest half July as described in the picture manual except alcohol on trapped pollen for PCR (and not for pesticide analyses).

Pollen identification
– trapped pollen for pollen identification are sent to Alice in alcohol 96%,
– Beehold tubes and beebread straws are sent, wrapped together with frozen icepacks in an insulating package of e.g. plastic foil with air bubbles or styrofoam box.

Pesticide residues
– APIStrips, Beehold tubes, trapped pollen and bee bread  are sent to the labs wrapped together with frozen icepacks from the freezer in an insulating package of e.g. plastic foil with air bubbles or styrofoam box.
– The division, where to send the samples for pesticide residue analyses will be announced in time.

The second stage; from year 1 sampling to the evaluation of the results.

We depart for the second stage. Most of the preliminary studies planned in stage 1, from kick-off to sampling commencement, are done, coming to an end in the months to come or will start soon. Surely new questions will raise and are to be addressed in the project course. Within six months after the attribution of the Grant Agreement in the last week of October 2018, the sampling begins this weekend of 28 April 2019. After the preparations as there were  telemeetings, study set-up discussions, and agreements on numbers of colonies, number of apiaries, number of samplings, matrices replications and combinations, development of the APIStrip, local organization of the beekeeper citizen scientists, picture manual, tutorials and other instruction tools, questionnaire, preliminary pollen- and pesticide residue binding- and deterioration tests, practical lab and field work, initiation of the sociological study, the dissemination structure and a lot of everyday issues, the field work starts. This is exciting because we are doing pioneering work with the non-invasive sampling, with the non-biological matrices APIStrip and Beehold tubes, the new beebread collection tool, the familiar pollen trap, apiculturist citizen scientist for pesticide monitoring and the first sociological evaluation of apiculturist citizen scientists. We will encounter a lot of practical issues like swarming, drought, heavy rainfall, supersedure, and issues we can not imagine now. It is up to the Insignia team to find answers and solutions. It will be as challenging as stage 2 and the Insignia team is aware of this and accepts.