PREPARATORY ACTION FOR MONITORING OF ENVIRONMENTAL POLLUTION USING HONEY BEES
Our citizen scientists were asked to sample some honey of their last honey harvest to compare the results to those of the pollen analyses. An alternative option was to cut out about 5 x 5 cm pieces of the honey combs. Latter has the advantage of not only honey, but also beeswax samples. Analyzing beeswax and honey are also common matrices to learn more about pesticide residues or pollen sources. Let’s see, what we will find out.
Kristina Gratzer
The samples on the picture came from a very reliable and motivated citizen scientist (CS) but during the checking process of samples through the national coordinator, we recognized that the used pen got blurred during sample transportation. Miss-matching samples are a catastrophe for the labs and the future results! This is the reason, why it is so important to have a backup system and to stay in close contact with the citizen scientists. Within the INSIGNIA project, every CS answers an online LimeSurvey questionnaire after each sampling date dealing with sample IDs, the date of the sample collection, phenology, possible problems, colony strength etc… With the help of this system, it was possible to assign each sample the right sample ID, bee colony and the right sample date.
Nevertheless: CHOOSE THE RIGHT PEN- which is always a PENCIL!! 🙂
Kristina Gratzer
According to Murphy’s law “whatever can go wrong, will go wrong” or in this case, “whatever can break down, will break down”. Last week we had some thunderstorms in Graz (Austria). The stormy weather was the reason, why we were surprised by an adapter, that was ripped in several pieces, the next morning. As the “outside tubes” were also gone, we had to insert new ones. Luckily and thanks to Duck tape, the broken adapter could be fixed and mounted very quickly.
Kristina Gratzer
Pollen and bee bread are very sensitive to high temperatures and light , meaning that it is important that they are kept in cold storage immediately after the moment they are collected till the moment they will be analyzed for pesticide residues as well as for their plant origin using molecular methods. Therefore the most promising method of transferring the pollen and bee bread samples from the CSs’ places to the National Coordinators’ Lab, in our case at the Division of Apiculture in Nea Moudania Greece, is to transfer them inside a big box filled with dry ice!
And this is what we did. We travel to the place of 3 out of 4 Greek Citizen Scientists in order to collect the samples they have been collected from their 3 colonies since almost the beginning of May. July is the month for thymus honey ccollection (from Thymus vulgaris mainly, but also from Thymus capitatus, Thymus atticus or Τhymus striatus) in areas near the see but also Castanea honey (from Castanea sativa) collection in the mountains.
Continue reading “INSIGNIA Sample collection Greek tour No 1!!!”
The amounts of substances, detectable in a colony, depends on how much is bio-sampled outside. This is directly linked tot he number of foragers. Therefore part of recordings done in the Insignia project is colony strength assessment with Image J. To do so the number of hive entering bees is counted with beecounters during about one week and in this week all frames with bees are photographed. The number of bees per photograph = one frame side is calculated by recording the surface covered with bees. One cm2 is covered by 1.25 bees (Delaplane, Guzman-Novoa, Steen, 2013).
These recordings are done in Rome by Marco and will be done next year in Denmark by Flemming, by Valters in Latvia and by Ivo and myself in the Netherlands. However want to join, please join.
With the colony strength data and number of hive entering bees, we study the linkage between these two parameters in order to have a simple citizen science tool that the colony strength can be assessed by counting the beelanes between frames of specific sizes. That is why the question of frame sizes and occupied bee lanes is added to the lime survey.
Keith S Delaplane, Jozef van der Steen & Ernesto Guzman-Novoa (2013) Standard methods for estimating strength parameters of Apismellifera colonies, Journal of Apicultural Research, 52:1, 1-12
Sjef van der Steen
APIStrips analyses in Almería are running at a good pace! We perform their extraction the day of arrival and the extracts are stored in the freezer until we can analyze them. This can imply less than 24 hours or up to several days. And then…
Pollen, beebread, and beehold tube samples from Denmark arrived at the lab of CIMO/IPB on Wednesday, after a two day-day trip. Samples arrived in good conditions. Now they are stored at -20 C awaiting for DNA extraction.
Alice Pinto
Yes, that happens. 6th sampling period starts today. In Denmark, we try to do the sampling on Fridays. So, this morning in one of the test apiaries we went out to mount the pollen trap. Shit happens. We did forget to unmount the traps. So, two traps where active for more then 10 days. One colony gave 1176 gram of pollen and the neighbor one gave 753 grams of pollen. This showing us that the last sampling period has been very active and productive for the colony. Our experience is that we of cause need flight condition with nice weather. But if we compare. Then colonies that are not in balance, we see little or no pollen collection. Could be a queen less colony. We have areas now where the lack of flowering plants now is so low, that this is a hindrance for further pollen collection.
Notice the difference in the colors of the two colonies.
Never mind, mistake done, let us enjoy the beauty and variety of pollen in bees’ colonies.
Flemming
A mail, drawing my attention to an EU bio-monitoring call caught my attention. Wow! This is an ultimate chance to demonstrate the honeybee colony’s bio-sample feature as a tool for environmental monitoring. More colleagues had this idea and we found each other in this shared interest. Obviously, this resulted in the start of a consortium which expanded like a swan glue game, resulting in the final Insignia consortium with experts of all required scientific disciplines. Many telemeetings later, with launching, discussing and evaluating ideas, we had a clear interpretation of the call and routes to achieve this. Our focus should be on developing and testing a scientifically substantiated citizen science protocol and the application of passive samplers to meet both the non-invasive and innovative requirements in the call and applying the common matrices trapped pollen and beebread as benchmarks.
Writing the final submission, waiting for the selection and the selection itself sounds simple but was stressful, hectic and required skills for all of us as there were science, statistics, grammar, flow charts, budgeting, summarizing, planning, financial recordings, (very) frequent communicating and reporting, use of social media, etc. etc..
Now we are eight months ahead and we already do have an impressive palmarès thanks to all particip[ants involvement and energy. Passive samplers were developed, testing schemes were made, discussed and implemented, picture/ instruction manual written, test apiaries selected, five samplings done, first analyses done, progress in molecular detection of pollen made, social study conducted, a lime survey running, the first data for evaluation of the Corine database collected, an active social media life and several practical issues addressed, solved or parked.
Still, five samplings to go in year 1 and the plenary discussions in January 2020 on best practices both scientifically, practically and citizen-scientifically. It feels good to cooperate in the consortium and, I am looking forward to the coming exciting 20 months.
Communication in itself is simply a matter of sending and receiving a message. This implies on one hand, a clear message. On the other hand, every receiver interprets the message within his/her own reference frame. This makes communication a difficult issue anyway. In Insignia, this shows in interpreting the coding of the Insignia samples. This coding is clearly explained and communicated in the picture manual. On the other hand, other lay-outs are suggested in the conviction that his/ her interpretation is better. Remember that there is a chain of “receivers” and the coding is six-dimensional: country, apiary, colony, date, material and replicates in time. Miscoding will for sure results in potential misinterpretations and certainly in time and energy loss in sorting out the samples. The solution is simple. Stick to the appointments and don’t make labeling
an enigma.